This thing called motherhood

As my daughters experience their third summer away at camp, I have found myself meditating on who I am when they, Boo (12) and Monkey (10) are not within touching distance. Missing them is, quoting my youngest daughter from a letter last summer, “like an ache that never goes away,” but I have found it reasonably easy (eventually!) to settle into a routine that has kept me focused on matters at hand like teaching, gardening and writing, and not on my relationship with my ever-evolving daughters.

Oh, I think about them frequently, I send emails every other day or so and I have been preparing myself for their return, but my active role as their mother has shifted this summer to just behind the main burner of my mind. Shifting focus that way has been a necessary step in dealing with their summertime absences.

Camp provides for them a measure of independence akin to the one they use to navigate the world of school, through cliques, kind people and those people tossed in every person’s life who is neither kind, nor pleasant, that will serve them so well in their lives. I look at camp as a means to ensure they have another of several distinct levels of experience (in this case, Canadian, educational and very Jewish) and are richer for having gone; there they have begun to make those lifelong friends who are the foundation of meaningful relationships – sure to mean long telephone conversations and millions of emails in the months to come. Not to mention, flights to Toronto for the Bat Mitzvahs of Boo’s friends.

That inevitable separation between a parent and her child begins at camp – under controlled circumstances – which is hugely instructive for them and is vital practice for me to ready myself for the stage to come when they are off having their own lives, using the lessons they have learned about functioning independently. At 10 and 12, that stage is a ways in the future, but not that distant; in ten years time College will be a reality for both of them. I am a huge proponent of the parenting ethos that defines a parent’s job as readying her children for independence, with the confidence to make their own choices and the understanding of the consequences of those choices.

I did start the summer cranky and ill-tempered, but the stomping and snarling has faded. However, I still have moments when I feel like a mother bear without her cubs, particularly after seeing mothers with their kids (especially babies for some reason); I think I am growing wistful for  that intensely bonded, 100 percent mothering you do with really little ones, a time well and truly passed for me.

When that bus arrives in Montreal with my daughters on it in TEN days, off it will disembark young people with a host of experiences they do not share with me, having made choices they did not consult me for and having been sad, mad and sick (camp is a germ wonderland) out of my reach.

I can’t pretend there isn’t anger at having them gone, that I don’t have flashes of blistering resentment at their absence, particularly when I do something I know they’d enjoy, but I didn’t send them to camp for me; they really love and consider camp their summer home. Part of the gift I give them IS summer life away from my influence; growing up, I was anything BUT independent. I am thrilled my daughters will be equipped with vital life skills and coping methods I did not install until I was an adult.

People sometimes assume, upon hearing my kids are away for the summer, that I am one of those parents who does it to “get a break” from them, or that it must be so great to have free time away from parental responsibility, but the truth is Bob and I would much rather have our daughters home with us. We really like our girls; their minds, wit, their joy and their startling tendencies to make us laugh at the unique perspectives through which they see the world.

Ultimately, beyond the missing, I have become more independent myself and I like to think I have reinforced the vestiges of pre-mom world view I’ll need in the future. Teacher me, a short leap from Mom me, has become a huge part of my self-definition, and I am a better parent for it.

When they come home, they return to a mother more appreciative of moment by moment coexistence, and one who is more rounded and clarified.

But Momma bear is so ready for the cubs to come home, argue with each other about whose turn it is to set the table, make the dogs nuts by chasing them and generally fill the house with their energy. Somebody very wise once said that being a mother is allowing your heart to go walking outside your body. I have done that, and it is good for both my children and for me, but I am just about done.

Ten more days.