I was caught off guard on Friday morning. As I climbed the stairs to poke my head into her bedroom and check on my kiddo (who had thrown up several times the evening before), I was struck by something I saw in her bathroom. (It’s not what you’re thinking.)
There, outside of her bedroom and low kid’s bed that’s plastered in unicorn stickers and full of stuffed animals, was my daughter’s overnight refuge: a small pink pillow and the bath towel that usually hangs next to the shower draped like a blanket on the floor. She’d laid herself a little bed at some point on Thursday night or Friday morning, no doubt trying to create some comfort for herself between bouts of retching.
Seeing her little makeshift infirmary, laid out on the cold tile at the base of the toilet, I was suddenly struck: she didn’t need me. Not to say that she never needs me, but in those late night/early morning hours, when she was getting sick and throwing up, I used to be right there with her, holding her hair, rubbing her back. I used to be awoken at all hours for any number of maladies, from the throw-ups to a sore throat, from bad dreams to midnight accidents. A soft knock on the door, followed by “mama,” was the call of the sick on those nights in years past.
That has changed, I realized on Friday morning. She didn’t need me to comfort her, hold her hair, or even hold vigil with her in those sick nighttime hours. She’s old enough now, it seems, to take care of herself when she’s throwing up.
This is—of course—a blessing and a curse, a literal milestone and a metaphorical one. But crossing this milestone on Friday morning stuck with me. It sat heavy on my heart all day. It brought me to tears hours later, as I was sharing with my wife how sad and bereft it left me.
Sometimes, it feels good to not be needed. I have been grateful for the return of bodily autonomy as my daughter has grown and needed me less in a physical way—my body no longer feeds her, holds her up, she no longer looks to me as the home that she used to inhabit. And then sometimes, like Friday, that realization of how far away she’s moved away from this body—my body, that grew and housed her for the first nine months of her existence—is utterly unbearable.
I am on year six of co-parenting and splitting custody of my daughter. She spends 50% of her time living in her dad’s house. She’s not far—just less than a mile up the road—but, for half her life, she sleeps and eats and comes home from school and throws up at night and has bad dreams and midnight accidents in a home that’s not mine. I say goodbye to my daughter constantly. I leave her, I let her go, I drop her off, I walk away. After more than five years, I should be used to this arrangement—and mostly I am. I should be through the constant guilt and deep sadness that accompanied my divorce—but I’m not. There are days, like Friday, where these goodbyes open up caverns of grief in me that I didn’t think could still exist.
I always, always, always miss her when she’s not with me. But that’s not all—I also cherish the time I have away from her to do solo adventures with my wife, to carve out singular time for whatever I want to do, to recharge my batteries so that I can be the best version of a mom possible when she is with me. I long for another arrangement, wherein I could have both worlds: the world where I am away from her to recharge and pursue the things that satisfy my non-mom parts, and the world where I never have to say goodbye to her because of a divorce that I chose to initiate.
I know that I have it good—I have all of the parts that make me whole. I have the alone time, the recharge time, I have a close and loving relationship with all the people that care for my daughter when she’s not with me. My daughter has it good, too—she is surrounded by people who love her, more people than I ever could have imagined. She’s inherited two new extended families by proxy when her dad and I re-coupled and got married. Both of those families are so functional, present, and giving of love that it brings me to tears as I write this. We are deeply lucky. Our family is integrated in a way that allows all of us to exist in ways that are deeply functional, loving, and whole.
And yet.
I still have this longing. Longing for less goodbyes, fewer fractures, something to fill the hole that I feel 50% of the time when she’s not under my roof, living and breathing inside the same four walls as me.
Is this all preparing me for some future version of her, when she’s launched and off on her own? Will I be fully steeped in grief and impervious to its effects when, say, she goes off to college? Maybe. I don’t know. (But my grief well runs pretty deep, so I sort of doubt it.)
For now, her room sits empty every other week and that will never sit well with my heart. I miss her, my growing daughter, who needs me less and less. I miss her so much, even when she’s with me, I realized. I miss all those parts of her that are gone, all that parts that I will never seen again. Each time she comes home to me, there is some new distance, another step she’s taken away from me. It is all right and good and what she’s supposed to be doing as she grows up. So, for now, I’ll give myself space to grieve, space to miss her, and space to mourn the days of my little daughter needing me in a way that I probably won’t see again. In that space, I’ll leave room for what’s to come, the deepening of our relationship, the growth of her humanity, and all the possibilities of what’s the come.
