I wrote this in a workshop featuring an exercise called “Visio Divina” where we were invited to look at a picture and simply write about it. The image of the unused child’s swing immediately stirred up memories from the early days of my being a mother of toddlers and how different my role as a parent to teenagers now must be.
Two wise friends who had paved the way through this passage ahead of me shared their wisdom. One said, just after our first daughter came home, “Just remember, every age is the best age!” and I have returned to that again and again as each stage of their growth and development required me to dig deeper into myself and find new ways of being a loving and guiding presence to babies, toddlers, little girls and finally teenagers while celebrating the wonderful women they are becoming.
Another friend said about parenting teenagers “Love them more, need them less and don’t take any of it personally” – such wise words! In finding their own unique and separate paths, they are doing what they need to do and in letting them do it, so are we.
We always told our girls, “Parents – they’re fired before they’re hired!” As hard as it is to imagine when they are all sticky hands wrapped around your neck, laughing holding onto Daddy’s leg as he tries to walk and “Rock me, Mama!” the most important lesson you will ever teach is “How to live well without me.”
Teenager
Long before you walked the earth with your tiny feet,
I saw you in my mind’s eye.
First in a baby swing, giggling with each gentle push,
Red cheeks flushed and laughing eyes.
“Again! Again!” till heavy lids began to close
and I bundled you out of your swing
and wrapped in warm, soft, blankets,
gently lay you down in in your crib
“Babies in their nests, all’s right with the world.”
Later a bigger swing with a ‘big girl’ now
“Higher, Mama, higher!”
How high can I send you and still keep you safe?
Not as high as you’d like but higher than I want;
that’s the bargain we parents strike.
Now you learn to pump and swing yourself
higher than ever – as high as I did
(and just as scary for my mother I now know)
But Oh, the exhilaration, the feel of wind and hair!
And the terrifying “jump” of the swing
as it almost leaps its chain – and then doesn’t
bringing you safely down to earth
Teenagers now and the swing set that was your delight
is snow-covered and rusts unused.
And I know you were meant
to launch yourselves into the unknown
All those pushes and catches finally find fulfilment
in the way you jump off in mid-air
And I, heart in mouth, watch
as the swing slows and stops,
snow settling on its seat like fairy dust or ashes
of a thousand pictures of days gone by
shredded into love,
floating down in the Christmas air,
each one a piece of joy,
a bedtime story, a rocking chair,
Tears soothed and hands that reach out to push and catch
and find only air and memories
and snowflakes that melt
when they touch my skin.