Achievements

Last night, I watched my 23 year old daughter graduate from nursing school. It was a surreal moment for me. I am exceedingly proud of her and over the moon about all that she has achieved. But I am also feeling a sense of loss as I come to terms with truly letting go.

It seems a part of me still clings to the baby I once prayed a special blessing over as a young, naive, barely 19 year old single mom in a hospital bed. That day I prayed for blessings for my child who was rejected by her father even before her birth. I prayed she would not grow up with the same destructive dysfunction I had received from my parents. I prayed that I wouldn't make grave mistakes that would wound her and cause fear and lack of confidence. I wanted her to have all the advantages I could give her, and even the ones I could not.

As I sat watching my former thumbsucking girl receive her nursing pin from her future husband and heard the thank you she had written for the ceremony, I felt exuberance over the woman she had become and cried tears of joy at her accomplishments. But inside, a part of me said goodbye to the last threads of parenting I had been holding on to, and mourned the loss of my duties as a doting mom.

Today, I feel in-between. Still remembering the feeling of parenting my now grown child, but now looking for new feelings to take it's place. The panic of not holding the reins any longer for her is slowly fading to memory and my heart is eager to know what the next stage of our relationship will feel like. I am sure I will always try to pick up those reins from time to time, but I will know deep inside that they are no longer mine to grasp.

The plan for me now is to shift my energies to my youngest daughter-still years away from emptying my nest. She is vibrantly different than her sister, and I work on keeping the comparisons to a minimum for my sake and hers. Still..a little sadness has settled in for the time being, and I wipe away tears.

Tomorrow is a new day. There is a wedding to plan for my graduated nurse. Sunday we bought "THE" dress, invitations are being ordered, photographer secured, officiant scheduled, venue chosen. There is much still to do and since we are paying for most of it, I'm sure I will have a little say in how things go...but just a little. Life goes on....it just does.