two pairs of feet hang over the nest
You will excuse me if I am entirely unavailable.
So many times, I have written about the dull roar. It has become a mantra to me. My only child was still new and behind my ears there was a buzz. "Do the work," it eventually told me. And so I did. And now we are here.
This year we are icing the cake. We are practicing a particular kind of mother-and-daughtering for two reasons. One - me, the mother - has quietened the buzz. Two - she, the daughter - has through her own hardship, found the most fulsome of voices. And this is where I want her to be, no? The goal of parenting is to let go? Watch them walk past, off the edge of the nest?
Except that I am here too, sitting with my feet over the edge. I am older now, and the world into which I will-might leap looks different than the one that stood before me as I flipped my tassel from one side to the other. Should I lament what has passed? It is not a loss, but the hardship was a jumble - a cacophony - when I first landed on my own fledgling feet.
And so you will excuse me if I am entirely unavailable.
We do our work so as to clear a path. We dust residue from our shoulders that is unidentifiable until on our hands and held up to the clear light of day. This work makes us lighter, more able to engage with my favourite metaphor, the dance. Light enough that we can bounce spontaneously if we feel it. Expansive enough that we can fling our arms wide and capture the temperature of the air some distance from us.
But if we choose to parent, we also do our work so that when they walk past us we can see them in all of their shine. See their brilliance, the disappointments they now carry as wisdom, the glint of the future in their eye. We do not cling nor push, but stand still in the patience we have grown so that we can simply observe this wonderous being who is about to more entirely step out into their own world.
So you will excuse me if I am entirely unavailable.
My sights are on her, but I have no idea what will meet my gaze when she leaps. I suspect I will sit quietly on the edge of the nest for a while and just listen. Mark time in its passage and purpose.
It strikes me that the ground will be different for me when I am ready. I am heightened as the work has been so hard that I expect the same. And yet the quiet clack of these keys - the dog just barked at a distant noise and allowed me to reassure her - speaks of slipping over the edge only to land immediately on a soft peat that stretches for miles, ready to offer me a gentle walk.
My two feet. My four-legged guard. My child, capturing air some distance from me.