Motherhood, childhood, and the sting of letting go.

Motherhood, childhood, and the sting of letting go.

A few weeks back in a FB post I flippantly promised a newsletter ‘on the weekend’. Turns out I left an unintended loop hole as to which weekend that would be, so technically I’m still fulfilling my promise :)

There’s an icy wind blasting down the valley today and my brain is unfairly fabricating snow flurries, to the extent where I hyper-focus on the droplets out the window ‘willing’ them to do their floaty little dance as they descend earthward.

I’m deep in thought. So deep in fact, that it's an effort to haul the words up to the surface and on to the page. I’m transported back to last weekend. 

Mothers day. I’m with my own mum, and we’ve decided it’s time I learnt to knit.

At 87, she sits in the sunny corner chair counting stitches as she casts them on. 

140, 141, 142. 

I’m supposed to be learning, counting, watching.  Her fingers duck and weave with the litheness of a much younger person, but her hands stay perfectly steady. I’m drawn to her face…a picture of concentration. 

She’s doing this for me.

It stops me dead in my tracks. 

I’m the kid here, and I realise that one day I’ll have to let go.

I’m not ready.

Gosh, motherhood and childhood. I never saw them as being similar before now.

I guess we don’t get to balance the scale until we step back and ponder all of it.

Joy, anxt, despair, excitement, love beyond measure, pain, exhaustion, exhilaration. 

It’s all there, and it ebbs and flows as the pendulum swings. One moment I’m being a mum, the next I’m being mothered, and in the midst of it all I’m pondering the inevitable sting of letting go. 

Will I ever be ready? I don’t know.

 

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