This holiday season has been a lesson in letting go.
For the past six months, my teenage daughter has been excitedly preparing for a training camp with her swim team this Christmas.
Part of the planning has been a number of fundraising efforts on her part – an attempt at teaching her the value of a dollar. Our daughter took in odd jobs over the summer, working for family, including her grandpa, who not only taught her to build electric fences, but to drive a stick shift and work with cattle.
She worked hard to sell flavoured popcorn, diligently collecting her fees and cold calling all of her friends and family for donations. All her hard work paid off – she earned over $1,000, which accounted for half of the cost of her trip that will include training in an outdoor pool twice a day and, I imagine, a great deal of good times and memories to be made.
There were so many adventures during the planning process, including several changes of venue from Maui to Puerto Rico to the final destination– southern California.
I was fully onboard while all the discussion and planning was taking place. In fact, I was excited about the opportunity the experience would afford her.
When I was a similar age, I was given the opportunity to travel to Europe for 21 days. It was a memorable trip, and one that opened a whole new world for me. I was able to visit France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. I visited Parisian cafes, the Red Light District in Amsterdam, tulip gardens and a concentration camp.
It was a sobering and eye-opening experience and one I will always appreciate.
So when the opportunity came up for my daughter, I was excited and thrilled.
That was until about two weeks ago when it became real. My little girl is going away. Over Christmas.
Anyone who knows me, knows I, unfortunately, am a worry wart.
I am the kind of person who fixates on poisonous jellyfish that may be present in the Hawaiian waters, rather than the amazing tropical vacation I am about to go on. If someone is 15 minutes late, I start wondering if they have gotten into an accident.
It’s not something I like, but it seems to be a part of me.
So as the days tick by and I realize the little girl I once spent nearly every second of her life with is going to be separated from me by 2,500 kilometres, I must admit my anxiety levels have risen.
Still, I have been able to maintain a sense of normalcy, only breaking down once when she asked me if I was OK. The answer: no, my baby is leaving in a matter of mere hours.
To make matters worse, for the past two years, I have been strangely fascinated by the doomsday prophecies of Dec. 21. That’s the day the world is supposed to be ending and my daughter will be hours away.
For the past few days, I have been thinking about earthquakes and tsunamis, the movie Taken and any amount of “what ifs.”
I know it’s silly, but my daughter won’t be around.
Many mothers, I believe, have gone through similar experiences – or, more likely, worse. I am thinking about the mothers of soldiers sending their teens off to war, or students heading overseas or even backpack trips taken by high school graduates. Or my own mother, who sent me off to Europe for three weeks with a group of friends and what I would now consider very young (and clueless) chaperones.
I am sure many of those mothers felt the same way I do – anxiety leading to a bit of a stomach ache, a beating heart and tears that threaten to come if I give the situation too much thought. All of these feelings are, strangely, mixed with intense pride and excitement for my little girl, who is fast becoming a young lady.
So I welcome the anxiety, the worry – I am a mom who desperately loves her daughter and I am proud of it.
I trust that she will be OK and this will be just another step towards me letting her become a productive, independent adult.
Still I am going to miss my baby.
