As her son goes off to college, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf realizes she has been raising him for independence all along.
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Lately, I am convinced I am missing a parenting gene. Or that I have a heart of stone. It is just over a week and counting until my firstborn, Nathaniel, heads off to college. My Facebook newsfeed is inundated with sentimental posts from fellow parents – teary status updates over mother-daughter trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond for extra-long bedsheets, hundreds of re-shares of Unprepared, Rob Lowe’s love note to his college-bound son, and other how-to-cope articles for nervous parents facing an empty(ier) nest. Yet none of this moves me. Or even interests me.
This time last year, a friend forwarded a beautiful article written by a mother grappling with this transition. At the time, I was navigating the comings and goings of a rising 12th, 10th and 8th grader. The pain of an eerily quiet household loomed too far in the distance for me to appreciate the author’s heavy heart. I promised I‘d tuck the article away for safe keeping until the time was right and I could fully absorb her emotional account.
I waited until today – the eve of my son’s 18th birthday – to reread it. It is a really lovely piece. I found myself half hoping it would bring me to tears. But again … well, nothing. Worse than nothing. A mother’s fiercest enemy, guilt. And the nagging question: why am I so unmoved by this milestone?
Perhaps it is partly because Nathaniel’s departure won’t eliminate the noise and the mess of teenager-hood from my life; after all, my nest is still two-thirds full.
I also think it may have something to do with Nathaniel’s independent, intrepid way of being – a characteristic that I’ve long assumed is part nature, part nurture.
He went off for his first full session of sleepaway camp at age eight. For my husband and me, who spent our respective summers reveling in the rituals of camp, the decision to send him was easy. It hadn’t even occurred to us that camp was part of the culture war that is modern parenting. I learned it quickly when I posted on a message board looking for ideas for his birthday care package – and, instead, was flamed for not loving my child enough to keep him home with me. Every year, The New York Times runs a story reinforcing the matter: this summer, its Room for Debate series addressed it twice — Should You Send Your Child to Summer Camp? and Should Kids Go to Sleepaway Camp?. The very fact that a decision that comes so easily to me is the subject of national news, reminds me that my parental instincts just might stray from the norm.
As a high school junior, Nathaniel spent half a year studying in Israel. The program offered the kind of life-changing learning a mother dreams of for her child. Sure, I missed having him under our roof, but that was far outweighed by my vicarious awe at all he was experiencing. Even when potential danger arose – he was there in November 2012 when Hamas rocket-fire reached Jerusalem, not far from the kibbutz where he lived, and war broke out – I didn’t second guess. Friends and family questioned why we weren’t bringing him home. That wasn’t even on the table. I was impressed by the increasingly passionate, informed arguments he made, especially when challenging my views (we mostly see eye-to-eye on Israeli politics, but not always – that’s a post for another day). But even then, I silently wondered what kind of a mother didn’t feel some primal fear or desire to bring her boy home to safety.
Finally – there’s the reality that he’s already got a foot out the door. Whatever the experts conclude about the pros and cons of sleepaway camp, Nathaniel is back for his 10th summer, having hit the road mere hours after tossing his graduation cap in the air. This year he’s working as a counselor for the youngest boys, the same unit where he started a decade ago. When I was there last week, attending visiting day for my daughters, I spied Nathaniel leading his campers in the bunk chant: “We are the boys of Mountainview, we aren’t very neat! We never wash our underwear or clean our dirty feet!” I laughed, thinking back to what it felt like to send my eight year-old off to learn songs, get dirty, and experience the world without me.
Those memories – the image of Nathaniel then and now – made my heart sing.
I suppose there’s my answer. Raising our kids to leave us is part of what we do. Some parents mourn it. Others grin and bear it. I guess I’m one who celebrates it. I have all along. No need to feel guilty or stone-hearted. And today, all I really want to do is sing about it. And so I will. Happy 18th Birthday To You Nathaniel.
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Photo of author and her son, Nathaniel on New Year’s Day 2014, taking an icy plunge into the Atlantic Ocean at the annual Coney Island polar bear swim. Used with permission.