We have only two children left at home. I knew we’d have to face this someday but over the weekend it became more real than ever for Mike and me. We moved our daughter Zoe into her first “real” apartment. You know, with a one-year lease, an unknown neighborhood and me, a freaked out mom.
She left home for college last July but she lived in student housing with three other girls, high security and lots of rules. I loved it. She hated it.
She missed two things the most, her cat and candles. Student housing has a strict policy against both.
Now she lives with her kitty Mr. Mistoffelees and vanilla-scented soy candles. She is in heaven and I am left to worry about almost everything. Are her neighbors nice or creepy? Will she remember to lock her doors? How will she do laundry, grocery shop and find the bus stop? What if she forgets to blow out the candles?
Seriously, how many things can I think of that might go wrong?
I remember my first experience at independent living. My “apartment” was my parent’s camper set up at the Grand Marais campground the summer after my graduation in 1982.
It was awesome! I didn’t have a car so I would walk or bike downtown to work and buy groceries. I had campfires and made “beverages” every night after working long shifts at the Blue Water Café. My friend worked at Dairy Queen so she would bring the strawberries and we’d blend them up with ice and whatever moonshine we could get our hands on that day. Life was good.
I also wanted the company of a pet so I brought my parakeet from home. Sometimes I would set his cage outside and the native birds would sit nearby and whistle back and forth. I felt so grownup and ready to take on the world. It was that surety of myself that kept the fear at bay. At 18 you don’t know what you don’t know. I never thought for one minute that my mom might be concerned or losing sleep over my campground shenanigans.
Author Barbara Coloroso says, “Parenting is one of those jobs that once you get really good at it you’re out of a job.”
If this is true I still have two “jobs” with Jack and Ben so it will be a few years before I am done…but then I wonder, will I ever be done?
Even though my daughter has moved out she still lingers in my every waking thought and sometimes in my dreams. They don’t tell you when you start having babies that a part of you is with your children all the time.
Now it is my choice to make…. will I spend every day in worry only bringing on the gray hairs even faster or will I accept the fact that I am no longer in control? I have sent my daughter into the world armed with her cat and her candles. May she be safe and happy. Now there are two…
Just because I laugh a lot, doesn’t mean my life is easy. Just because I have a smile on my face every day, doesn’t mean that something is not bothering me. It’s just that I choose to move on from the negative in my life and keep my head up instead of dwelling on the past.
Wise Unknown Author
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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