I remember the first time my firstborn got behind the wheel of a car, his newly minted permit tucked into his back pocket and me tucked into the passenger seat next to him.
It was surreal.
We were headed home from the place that had duly tested him and deemed him duly ready to start this whole driving thing.
I didn’t know what they were thinking. He was just a baby. He wasn’t ready.
Yeah, okay, maybe I wasn’t ready.
But ready or not there I was with a son itching to try and me itching at the thought, because what mother in her right mind wants her baby to get behind the wheel of a car for the first time? And more importantly, what mother in her right mind doesn’t?
It’s the letting go, the letting them try. That’s the hardest part of motherhood really. It’s not the diapers, not the laundry, not even the stormiest storms of adolescent rage.
It’s the letting go. Letting them try. Letting them fail and succeed and grow.
Letting them try.
And we know this. Us moms who want to hold on tight but want more than this to see them fly, these sons and daughters that we brought up, who brought us to the end of ourselves and the beginning of Love more than once during the first sixteen or so years.
And we also know this – that we must let them try, because only when you’re free to try are you truly free to grow, to be, to live.
Do we do the same with ourselves? Do we allow ourselves the freedom also to try, to grow, to be, to live?
Do we dare to sit behind the wheel of our life and take it for a spin?
Or do we stay safe and stay tucked into known and tuckered out from a life that’s lost its luster?
Yet what if you fail?
What if you fall?
What if you drive into a ditch or two?
What then?
Well, I guess then you’re free to pick yourself up, pull yourself out, get yourself back behind the wheel and keep on trying.
There’s really no other way to learn.
No other way to grow.
No other way to really live.
Unless you allow yourself the freedom to try.
~xo,
LuAnne
