Writing this blog was hard. I didn’t really have time, because I’m on a Midwest college tour with my sixteen-year-old daughter. We drove 12 hours from Georgia to Michigan. We spent four days in Michigan touring The University of Michigan and visiting family. We’re now headed to Chicago to visit Northwestern University. Our final stop is the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
It’s hard to collect my thoughts, because my mind has been totally consumed with the specifics of our travel plans and the reality of what it means. In two short years my youngest child will be going away to college. My role as a mother will no longer be center stage. And while I look forward to the next phase of my life, I’m having a hard time letting go.
I’ve spent the last twenty-four years of my life committed to raising my children. And though I have always worked in some fashion, my family came first. My career, if you can even call it that, was always a secondary thought. However, if I’m honest with myself, something inside of me wanted to claim her space. I’ve come to understand that thing is my writer. Increasing, she refuses to take a backseat to the rest of my life. And while the mother in me is focused on how this trip affects my daughter, the writer sees it as a fodder for a variety of creative pieces. The writer wants to write about the death of the bookstore, the adventures of a mother-daughter road trip or what it’s like to return to places where you’ve once been. But when it comes time to write, I’m too tired from being a mother. I don’t honor the writer though she is the very thing that has the ability to sustain me.
My daughter brought a friend along on our trip. When my daughter drives, her friend sits in the front seat with her. They are happy listening to their music and chatting about tweets. It’s their trip, really. My role is adult chaperone. The trip really shouldn’t get in the way of writing. They are perfectly content to do things without me. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s their preference.
Nonetheless, I feel that if I focus on my writing it would be too much like my mother. My mother rarely had time for me. She was much more focused on her own needs. She wasn’t involved in my college selection. And the few mother-daughter trips we took were driven by her desire to visit a particular place. I always thought of her as selfish. But this trip has made me question what my mother wanted for her life. Amid all her ravings about being heard and having value, was she trying to establish her place in the world? Was she struggling with who she wanted to be and who the world told her she had to be?
If so, it changes everything.
It’s a really uncomfortable thought. That’s why I’ve decided to allow the writer to do what she wants during the trip. She has woken me up every morning to write my morning pages. During the tour of Michigan’s campus, she took notes from a writer’s perspective rather than a mother’s. She snapped photos. She has excused herself during lulls in the family visits to write. And as a result, she’s managed to write this blog and a vignette about growing up. There is much she wants out of the world and she knows that only I have the power to give it to her.
While sitting in a coffee shop on Michigan’s campus, my daughter bought a pint of ice cream and only eat a 1/4 of it before throwing it away. I said I thought I taught you better than to waste food. And my daughter replied, “What you taught me is to chase my dreams.” Granted, she was being a smart ass, but I realized she’s going to be fine. At sixteen she is planning the next stage of her life with her dream to guide her. The best thing I can do as her mother is to honor my writer.
