My daughter will be going off to college here soon. I’ve had multiple conversations with friends about when their kids leave for college and how they cope. Not only within themselves, but within the family that is left behind.
One story was about a daughter that went off to college. She’s a basketball player, and has since been introduced to the basketball environment around campus. And that includes older students/players. A certain older student took an interest in her, and she was reciprocating. And I watched as her dad, a friend of mine, go through what I assume every father goes through: Don’t mess with my baby.
You see, from a father’s perspective, we have a drive to protect.Not only from wanting to protect her as “my little girl”, but there is an inherent need to protect them from anything and everything that could hurt them.
It might be a weird way to describe this, but I feel we (her mother and I) have built this human from scratch. We have given everything we have to make sure they’re learning the right lessons, in the right school(s), doing the rights activities, making the right grades, nurturing the right friendships. And on and on and on. And then we reach this point where we are faced with the fact that they are just…released…to the world. And we are expected to simply let it happen, and sit back and let them make their own mistakes.
Do you know how hard that is? To sit aside and say (internally), “she’ll get there”. It’s frickin’ impossible sometimes. And my feelings don’t even compare to her mother’s. I’m the one who is more ready (whatever that means) for that inevitability. And that’s scary.
I’ve often listened to Trisha Yearwood’s 1992 hit “Walkaway Joe”, and empathized with the mom’s perspective:
Mama told her baby, “Girl, take it real slow” Girl told her mama, “Hey, I really gotta go He’s waitin' in the car” Mama said, “Girl, you won’t get far” Thus are the dreams of an average Jane Ninety miles an hour down a lover’s lane On a tank of dreams Oh, if she could have only seen
I can so relate to that. We (as parents) work to prepare our kids to go off in their life. And that’s all we can do; just prepare them. We can’t make them do anything. We can steer, we can encourage, but we have to let them go and make their way. They will make mistakes. They will mess up. And as I see it, our job as parents is to be there where they need it. And not be there when they need that.
It’s weird. Because that feeling vacillates between helplessness and great pride. I know every parent eventually goes through this. I just happen to be hitting this one at this point in my life.
God help me when my little boy does the same thing two years from now. I’m actively choosing not to deal with that right now. One day at a time 😌
