Growing Up Is Hard To Do At Any Age

I set the carton box on the counter and waited my turn.

“How are you doing?” asked Linda, proprietor of Post Net, the postal store on Reserve Street in Missoula, when she finished with the customer ahead of me. She knew when I came in with a package under my arm that chances are it was addressed to one of my two daughters. And that meant they were not here visiting. And when they weren’t here visiting, I was battling breakdown. Fighting back the tears. I was doing a mighty job of it today.

I hadn’t always exercised such reserve. When I first moved to Missoula, after my girls had moved away from our former home to faraway cities, Linda was my safe place—I could put my packages on her counter and cry the blues. Their homes were far away from me now, when all I’d ever wanted in my entire life was to live around the corner and have everyone over for Sunday night dinner, as easy as pie.

Lest you think I need therapy (the jury is still out on this) I am not one of those mothers who inserts her menopausal psyche into her adult children’s lives. During their younger years, I was most certainly involved, and always there for the girlhood crises. Still am. But I was perfectly content to see them off with brand new driver’s licenses. I looked forward to hearing their college stories, their study abroad adventures. Of course, they were still coming home—for Christmas, for summer break, sometimes just for the weekend. I didn’t want to strangle or stalk them; I just wanted to meet for lunch or a cup of coffee any old day of the week.

Home was the same place it always had been. The anchor, the sigh of satisfaction and relief after a long, hard day, week, month, or semester. When they graduated from college and back to back bolted for cities that tugged at them, either due to a dream boy or a dream job or both, and my father went into an Alzheimer’s facility, at first I welcomed the opportunity to clean like a demon and be “just me” instead of a mother or a daughter or a caregiver. My stress level plummeted from 10 to 0, but after the dust settled, I wandered aimlessly from room to room, just to pick up the lavender scent of Clary’s shampoo, the rose aroma of Kate’s body wash, the Old Spice and vitamin B that belonged to daddy. The daily routine wasn’t hectic anymore, but because of it, I felt a little lost, nostalgic for the noise of their comings and goings. The house went up for sale—there was no point in bumbling around day after day in such an oversized space.

After we moved, I sent Clary little things that made me think of her—Pat Conroy books and anything French from deep down in my hope chest—to New York. I brought box after box overflowing with clothes I’d packed in Southern California but found I could not use in Montana. Off they were to Kate, who wears my size, is married, and was living in Scottsdale, Arizona. As fat teardrops stained the address labels, Linda encouraged and consoled me.

Month after month, and especially on the heels of the dreaded airport trip where I would drop them off after a much anticipated visit and make a beeline for Post Net in order to ship them whatever wouldn’t fit in their suitcases, she knew a basket case when she saw one. Whenever I pushed open her door with one shoulder, laden with cardboard boxes, she offered me her shoulder, to cry on.

My mother had sent me to private schools, showed me how to be a lady, and taught me everything I needed to know, including how to go on living without her. But she’d never taught me how to do this. Three happy generations had inhabited the same suburb since our family’s world began. Nowadays it seemed everyone’s adult children were sprinkled all over the planet. Yet not one of the mothers I knew was reduced to blubber and bawl due to separation anxiety. Linda wasn’t there yet, her children being much younger than mine, and when she arrived in this disconnected place, I imagined she’d do a better job at it than I was doing. Anyone would, and was. But at least she empathized.

Conversely, when either of the girls was here and I’d have occasion to mail something, I pranced through her door as ebullient as a three-year old on her birthday. The rise before the fall.

Then one blessed day when God decided to answer my most heartfelt prayer, Kate’s husband was temporarily transferred to Spokane! It would only be for a few months, but in the summer, when she and I could actually drive back and forth to see each other! After that, his company might move them to Seattle! Be still my heart—it wasn’t both girls (only half of my prayer but Lord knows, I’d take it), but at least it was one. It wasn’t around the corner, but it was a far cry closer than Scottsdale. Heck! I’d heard that half the women in Missoula hopped in their cars and drove to Nordstrom to go shoe shopping and back in one day! Even if we didn’t see each other that much more often, psychologically it would make a world of difference just to know we were so geographically close. While running errands in town, I sprinted through the busy parking lot, dodging cars, eager to surprise Linda with glad tidings.

Summer has ended now, and after all that hope, Kate’s husband decided to enroll at Arizona State University to get his masters in business. One minute she was “ so over” Scottsdale, but come to find…the next, she missed her friends there. She loves her mother, but is relieved to be returning to what feels familiar. This is as it should be, since what I want for her is happiness.

For me, if I am honest, there is no more familiar. Will I ever become accustomed to the space between?

“We discovered that drive is no piece of cake,” I rationalized to Linda when I stopped to mail Kate a package just two days after they’d passed through Missoula on their return road trip to Scottsdale. She was brokenhearted for me. Her furrowed brow betrayed real concern. Was I was going to be all right? “And you can only travel I-90 for a short time anyway,” I continued without shedding a single tear. My voice remained steady and bold. “Winter would have come, and we wouldn’t have seen each other any more often—maybe less!”


“Very true,” Linda nodded.

“She’s safer on a plane!” This coming from one who refuses to fly because there is no logical way something that large and that heavy can possibly stay in the air.

“Absolutely,” agreed Linda as, with a quick click she wiped Kate’s Spokane address off the face of her computer and re-entered Scottsdale.

“But the real reason I am okay with this, besides the fact that I have no choice, is that she is happy. She really is happy to be going back,” I said confidently, and I meant it…well, at least part of me did, on a good day. “I’m over it (I was in fact exhausted from the emotional ups and downs of the situation). I can do this for her.”

Linda stepped back from the counter, took a very long look at me, and smiled.

“You know, Mom? You’ve done a lot of growing up since we first met. I’m proud of you!”

That did it. I swallowed a sob. Without reply, I quickly collected my receipt, smiled what must have appeared a very weak one, and mumbled something that caught in my throat like a piece of half-chewed taffy. En route to it, I unlocked the door to my car with the remote while speed walking, plopped into the driver’s seat, buried my head in my hands and wept.

I’d fooled her only slightly more than I’d fooled myself.

Not so grown up after all, I said out loud to no one. Then it hit me. If growing up means I learn to breezily exist without my children nearby, no matter how old we all are or what the expectation associated with our age is, I think I’ll pass.