On Adulting (Not Mine)

To be quite honest, you almost didn’t get a blog post this week, because I’m very busy since my husband and I leave on our first real vacation in more than three years tomorrow and we are going WITHOUT OUR CHILDREN. This comes on heels of our son making the monumental decision not just to move out of our house, but out of the state to Boise, a city more than four hundred miles and six hours by car away from our home in northern Nevada.

Now I’ve promised that this is not a parenting blog and it’s not suddenly going to turn into one, but I have some observations about parenting now that we are mostly through it. I’ve mentioned before how deeply satisfying it is to spend time with your adult and nearly-adult children and realize they are good people whose company you actually enjoy, but it’s a different kind of satisfaction altogether to know that the kid who is about to launch will be just fine without you.

I know families who celebrate an eighteenth birthday and/or graduation from high school with the gift of a foot in the ass and a shove out of the family home. Obviously, this has not been our philosophy. Our son is twenty and would be welcome to stay here as long as he liked rent-free, as long as he was attending school of some sort. He’ll still be attending culinary school, but his employer made an offer to relocate that even his sister recognized he’d be an idiot not to take.

To be honest, we don’t want him to go. Of course not! I like him right here. But a larger part of me realizes–in accordance with our parenting philosophy–this is exactly what is supposed to happen.

That parenting philosophy? It’s easy (but also hard, because parenting), and I’m quite certain I stole it from more than one episode of Dr. Phil. Here it is: we are raising adults, not children. That’s it. Nearly every decision we’ve made in our parenting lives has kept our eyes on the goal of fostering independence and bringing up happy, well-adjusted grownups who can function in and contribute to society with little guidance from us.

Now it’s impossible to tell at this juncture whether we’ve been successful, but we’ve got to pat ourselves on the back for the things that have worked. Both our kids have jobs they drive themselves to. They maintain their own schedules. They take themselves to the doctor and the dentist. And one has signed a lease on an apartment and is moving out of state with only logistic help from us. That’s huge, friends.

My family–including my soon-to-depart son–are making bets on when I will cry because he’s launched. For those who know me personally, you know I’m not a crier and don’t handle other’s crying well. I laugh along with them, but I know the exact time I’m likely to lose it (and that would make my daughter the winner of the bet). If I do cry, it will be only partly of sadness, because I will miss my son, but mostly because I am so so proud of him and all he’s accomplished. I hope he does what makes him happy.

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Update on Last Week’s Short Post about the Hardest Thing to Write

I finished the fucking acknowledgements, which were still hard to write, but much easier after I got out of my own way. I’m still not convinced I didn’t forget someone, but at least they’re finished. After the CHILD-FREE vacation (can you tell I’m excited about this?), it’s going to the proofreader, and at the same time, I will register the copyright. As soon as I have a publication date, I’ll let you all know. I’m pretty excited about it. I hope you are, too.