Not Quite Ready

Every now and then I feel a very strange compulsion to exercise with my kids.  Healthy family habits, good example, bonding, blah, blah, blah.  It's strange because it always seems to involve more pain than fun and yet somehow I forget that (kind of like birthing a baby) and decide once again that it's the thing to do.  So today I declared a family run. 

My daughter is a perfect angel (in this one small area, and possibly just for today) and just jogs along at my side.  My boys are thoughtless, possibly evil creatures, who can far outrun me.  While running backward.  I hate them; no I really love them and could burst from a not-so-secret-pride in their athletic endeavors, even as I glare ferociously and tell them that if we were running 5 more miles I would run them into the ground, and yes, I am fine and please stop trying to hug me while saying things like "Poor Mama.  She looks tired."

I am a mature human being, a self-less mother, who has adapted just FINE to this idea of not being able to keep up to my kids, and so, today, when we started off on our 3 miles, I told the boys that they would be allowed to go ahead after we got past the stop sign.

We're blessed to live on a road that sees about 50 cars go by on a busy day.  After we go south of our house, past the stop sign, there's a stretch that sees maybe 20.  Fields on either side.  I think of it as pretty straight and flat (because this is NJ, after all, not PA), so I don't think they'll be out of sight for long, and I'm determined not to be one of those helicopter moms.  I'm NOT a helicopter mom, after all, never have been really, and plus I have some firm ideals about encouraging kids to stretch their wings and learn independence a little at a time.  Letting them fail in small things while they're under my wings so they can learn how to fail at big things when they leave the nest.  Blah, blah, blah. :)

There's a small hill after the stop sign, which then goes down gradually to the next stop sign about a mile away.  The boys take off together, all confidence, sweat, and manliness (with some little boy thrill and excitement thrown in by my so-called "little guy" on his bike).  I watch them run away from me without so much as a backward glance - I really thought there would be at least a couple of backward glances - and they are soon out of sight over the hill.  When I get to the top, I am unpleasantly surprised at how far away 1/4 of a mile looks - maybe it's more.  How fast they've gotten that far from me.  How much farther there is to go before they turn around.  And I had forgotten that there's a slight curve and additional slope that hides the stop sign from me.  But at this point it's too late for second thoughts.  Even though I can zoom in pretty well w/ the camera, they are outside the range of my voice.

Gulp.

And it turns out I'm not quite ready.  I'm not quite ready for them to succeed OR fail at this little trip out of my sight.  I'm not quite ready for them to take ANY steps away from me, let alone little ones.  It turns out that *I'm* the one who needs to practice letting go.  I'm the one who's failing (or maybe succeeding, who knows) in the unending march to their independence.

All I can do is keep going .  . . counting the cars that pass (2, one of whom is the farmer who lives across the road from us and who creeps along at a sedate pace) . . . keep running to that next hill, and wait at that curve . . .

 

 

. . . where I see them sticking together.  Looking out for each other.  Succeeding.  Without me.

But I'm still not quite ready.


~Stephanie