Having a Grown Child Is Like Being a Lovelorn Teen All Over Again

When I was 14, I fell madly in love with a boy who sometimes, for a few hours, seemed to love me back . Most of the time he paid no attention to me. Or paid me the littlest bit of attention possible—pausing to talk for a minute in the hall between classes, or walking by but telling me that I looked good, or just nodding at me aswalked by where he stood talking with his friends. Enough to make my heart race. Enough to keep me hopeful. Then he’d go right back to ignoring me for days or weeks.

Be cool, be cool, be cool. Don’t ask him what he’s doing later. Or tomorrow, or this weekend. Do NOT tell him you miss him. Don’t be pathetic, don’t make a big deal of this. Don’t scare him off.My daughter almost never calls without texting me first, so I always have a minute or two to compose myself, to make sure I don’t sound manically overjoyed. A teeny tinybit of joy is all right, I think—after all, I want her to know I’m happy to talk to her. But not that I’m over the moon.

But it wouldn’t have worked if she’d had to ask me for it. I admire her for not asking—for not even hinting. For playing it so cool.Last Christmas was the first ever that my kid wouldn’t be coming home at all. She had only three days off of work, and so they had to institute an alternate-holiday plan: This year they would spend it with her husband’s family in Texas. She broke the news to me over the phone in September, soon after she’d started her new job.

I’m not talking about “faking it till you make it.” I’m not pretending to be chill, cool, collected, in hopes of one day actuallychill, cool, collected—well under the moon. I’m not talking about faking, period. I’m talking about reading the room. I’m talking about assessing the situation and handling it the way the person I love most needs me to handle it.And when it’s hard, as it almost always is, I remind myself that I’m still giving love, still giving my daughter what she needs.

Family Motherhood

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