letting go

This is a picture of my son many years ago when he was 3. He was on his way to his first day of pre-school. I still remember how I felt all these years later. He was my baby, how could he be ready for this. Surely he would cry and be miserable and not want to be away from his mommy. He did cry a little in the beginning but before to long he adjusted and couldn't wait to go and play with his new little friends. I remembered this moment and many others with my children when I read Michael Gerson's touching article in the Washington Post today. It was about sending his kids to summer camp and how difficult it is as parents to let go. Below is my favorite part of his article but you should go and read the whole column here.

The yearly departure for camp measures the progress of parental irrelevance. Four years ago, the first time my wife and I left our youngest son at sleep-away camp, there was no pretense of bravery on his part. There were only piteous tears, which returned, according to a camp counselor, every night for two weeks. I wanted nothing more than to run to him, to end the trauma we had inflicted and rescue him from independence. But I didn't. Each summer this departure grows easier for him and my older son -- and more difficult for me, until my bravery finally fails and all the tears are mine.

So this is the independence we seek for our children -- to turn our closest relationships into acquaintances. Of course, I knew this getting into parenthood. But the reality remains shocking. For a time, small hands take your own -- children look upward, and you fill their entire universe. They remain, to you, the most important things in the world. To them, over time, you become one important thing among many. And then an occasional visit or phone call. And then a memory, fond or otherwise.

The memory of my own father, gone these 17 years, is fond and blurry. He shrank in my mental universe from sun to star, bright and distant. With every season of camp, I dim to my sons as well. It is the appropriate humility of the generations. It is also harder than I thought. And I don't know how to let go.

Michael Gerson