Learning to Disengage

Ep 51 Grown & Flown Co-founder Ma... Ep 52 Author Mary Laura Philpott

Learning to Disengage

News from the home front: Our youngest daughter survived the college application process that seems to have started infinity years ago and was made extra sporty in 2019 thanks to the Operation Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Don’t worry, I successfully photoshopped her face onto an Olympian pole-vaulter’s body and sent the pic to USC, so she’s all set for next fall.

Actually, she played her cards very close to the vest – we never even read her personal statement or essays – and came up with her list of schools with only a modicum of parental input. It was a good list, and she’s off to a school next fall that seemed from the start to be the right fit for her. It’s not a school that seems like an easy fit, by the way. She’s going to have to put a lot of herself into making it successful, and I’m mostly relieved about that. I think part of college is making yourself a little bit uncomfortable – it’s too big, or too rural, or too city, or too bohemian, or too preppy – and seeing what you do with that irritant. The whole oyster/pearl thing.

But the fact of the matter is that she graduates high school in May and heads to school in September and then my husband and I will be empty nesters.

As the good people at Grown and Flown say, “Parenting never ends.” Obviously. I called my 85-year-old mom last week when I got upsetting news about a friend, because I knew she’d make me feel better, and she did. Our other college girl asks for my opinion on certain subjects more now than she did when she lived under my roof. I understand that I am not setting my child to sea on an ice floe.

But in terms of hands-on feeding/driving/cleaning up after/doing laundry for? I’m about to have my workload cut to the bone, for the first time in 21 years.

I’m trying to be sentimental about it, but I just can’t work up a tear about not needing to transfer the 845 separate drinking receptacles sitting on my kitchen counter to their final dishwasher destination, four feet away.

The thing that will be hard, though, is putting my internal sensors into hibernation (calling it “retirement” feels like tempting fate.)

One of my mom’s catchphrases during my childhood that eventually became one of mine is, “A thousand times a day, dear, a thousand times a day: your mother thinks about you, at home, at work, at play.” That’s it. It’s the shaping of your day by the needs of someone else’s, in a way that is so deeply ingrained that it’s not even conscious.

Obviously 18-year-olds don’t require nearly the same parental exertions as were necessary in the diaper-changing years. Still. I get up and start working at 6, because at 7:30 I need to be upstairs making sure people are up and moving and forms are signed and lunch stuff is available. I never schedule meetings between 8-9 in case I need to drive to school. I try to wrap up most things by 4:15 when the front door reopens so I can be around if I’m needed again, but I always leave myself a few more mindless tasks to complete in my office in case what’s actually needed is utter silence and reprieve from a mom who is saying, “How was your day? What happened? Did anything interesting happen today?” Although even if Mom’s not asking those questions aloud, she is downstairs in her office listening hard for evidence of the answers.

The 5:30 pm drive to ballet each evening, especially once we’ve picked up the other kid who asks my daughter a ton of questions about school, friends, and college: a goldmine of listening and assessment. Same when we are given the post-ballet report over a very late dinner. And although I recently told some friends, “I don’t parent past 10 pm unless you’re barfing,” it’s a full day of being on alert, even so.

I imagine it as a control center in my brain that simply scans a grid of my children’s physical and emotional states all day, every day, when we are under the same roof. Like a radar sweep that operates in the background until you hear the warning “blip” and pop into action.

My older daughter tells me that when her college friends ask her how her parents are going to cope once the younger sister is gone next September, she says, “Don’t worry about my parents. They have things to do.” My book comes out this fall and I have a million related tasks and plans. My husband will be stepping into some new responsibilities at work himself in the coming months. We’ll be busy, all right.

I just need to figure out how to disengage the Mom Sonar first.

My younger daughter loves this band.

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Marketing genius that I am, I only recently remembered that I wrote an eBook back when the girls were much smaller, with a collection of essays on parenting (of humans and pets.) The Family Mix is still available for your eReader if you ever want to give it a go! There, that’s my hard sell.

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See you at the Cat Club on 1190 Folsom Street San Francisco on April 13 for the next Midlife Mixtape ’80s Alternative Dance party! All are welcome – it’s a fundraiser for Bay Area food banks so bring your change for the bar buckets! All details here…

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