All through their childhood, there were days when you would hide in the bathroom or the bedroom and try to imagine the day when they were grown, out of the house, and no longer causing your ulcer to flare. When there would be just a moment of peace that didn’t end with a wail or a crash or a scream or a slam or a “MO-OOOOOM!”

You cannot imagine your life without them. You know they’ve only been here for a finite time, but it’s so hard to remember what life was like with just you and your spouse, when it was two against the world, and the future seemed so possible. 99.9% of the time, you thank god for the chance to know these beautiful children and you try your hardest to make sure they know how much they are loved. You realize that while you would gladly die to protect your spouse or your parents, you would gladly kill to protect your children—without a thought or a blink.

You can’t count the hours of sleep you’ve lost, or the meals you’ve missed, or the tears you’ve shed, or the words you’ve shouted, or clothes you’ve discarded because they no longer fit post-partum. You don’t know how you still have any teeth when you know how hard you’ve had to grit them to keep the angriest words inside, whether they’re trying to slip out in fury towards your child or their friend or their teacher or their ex-boyfriend. You really don’t try so hard on that last one, but you do try.

You wonder if you’ll ever actually see the floor in their bedroom again, or be able to fully close their closet doors, or drive anything other than a minivan, or ever not have chicken nuggets in your freezer and fruit roll-ups in your pantry. You’re amazed when you realize you are can throw around terms like pas de deux and bicycle kick and negative space and the infield fly rule, and actually know what you’re saying. You’ve gotten really good at gas chicken and can internally calculate the miles between home and school and soccer and dance and the gas station. You’re happy to know all those elementary and high school math skills are still buried somewhere in your brain, and even happier when you can shake them loose during homework time at the kitchen table. You thank god for Google when those skills appear to be forever lost to college happy hours or pre-partum all-inclusive romantic getaways to Cancun.

You’re overwhelmed with how much they rely on you until they hit third grade, then realize they’ve started pulling away sometime in the last year when you weren’t paying careful attention. You’re seeing evidence of the person they are becoming, not just your child, but a real, whole, independent person of their own. By the time they’re in high school, you’re starting to worry that you may actually get your wish for that quiet house. You find yourself having to grit your teeth more and more, because even though you have an abundance of advice to give, there is no one willing to listen, and you remember how you, yourself, preferred learning by doing. You thought it would get easier as they got older and less dependent and less time-consuming. You thought you were looking forward to the time they didn’t need you maybe quite so much.

Boy, were you wrong.

You start to realize that, while you will always be a mother, your time for being a parent is quickly coming to a close. All that time you spent pushing and prodding and teaching and explaining how to be responsible for your own actions is coming back to bite you. This is also about the time you start apologizing to your own mother daily, in your head and in your heart. Some of her pointed comments now make sense, the “I could’ve told you that” and the “but what do I know” and the “if you would’ve listened to me.” You remember thinking she just didn’t get it, and you now realize she got it all too well. You want to go back and ask her now, but you also want her to think of you as a competent adult. It will be years before you understand that she has always thought of you as that adult; she just wanted the chance to help you as your changing roles develop with age. It is when she is gone and just a memory that you wish with all your heart you could ask her some questions, maybe about a million, and wish you could curl up next to her and let her be your parent one more time.

Because once your children leave home for the first time, your role has changed. You can keep the label of ‘mother,’ but you have to set down the ‘parent’ one. If you’re lucky, you may be able to eventually replace it with the label of ‘friend.’  But first, they need to figure out how to be as independent as they think they are. They fall, and get up, and fall again, and get up again, and you sit to the side feeling every one of their hurts, wishing they would let you be a parent just one more time. Usually not, but you have to remember that you’re still their mother. So you’re there when they finally decide they need their mom, even just long enough to get back on their feet. Upright once again, they use those feet to keep walking further away. You try to remember they are not walking away from you, but to their own future. Your head may get it; your heart still remembers when they were your future. 

The years have slowly moved you from the center of their universe to the outside orbit of their life, and you didn’t quite fully get that your independence from their needs equated with their independence from yours.  You really do understand that this is the way it’s supposed to be; they have to be prepared to live without you in the same house so they can be prepared to live without you in the same world. You want them to carry on. You want them to be happy. You want them to have everything they need.

You just didn’t realize it would hurt so much. You thought childbirth was painful.

Boy, were you wrong.