Apparently I’m Smothering My 19-Year-Old Who Is Never Home
Ever been yelled at by your young adult child? Of course you have, we all have.
But damn, it hits differently than when they were a belligerent toddler screaming at you.
My 19-year-old has been wanting to move away from home for university.
I, on the other hand, have not been a fan of this idea AT ALL.
It’s likely because when I was her age, I know what I was doing, and that scares the living shit out of me.
Enter my mother and her opinion.
“You left and moved to a foreign country and didn’t call me and didn’t leave a number to reach you. It took me 3 days to track you down and I was so upset I was throwing up.”
Okay, fair point, Mom. And this is exactly why my favourite pastime is refreshing Find My iPhone to check my 19-year-old’s location.
This is what we call generational growth.
My mother had to launch an international search party.
I can tell you which aisle of Walmart my daughter is standing in.
We have evolved.
Apparently my daughter does not view this technological advancement with the same enthusiasm I do.
She calls it “smothering.”
I call it not spending three days vomiting because my child has disappeared into another country.
Tomato, tomahto.
The truly impressive part is that I’m apparently managing to smother a person who is never fucking home.
Do you understand the skill level required here?
She has a job. Friends. A boyfriend. University. A car.
I see this child approximately fourteen minutes a week, usually while she’s standing in the kitchen looking for something to eat before leaving again.
And somehow, during those fourteen minutes, I have managed to interfere with her development as an independent adult.
I’m basically an elite-level smotherer.
I can apparently helicopter-parent remotely.
This wasn’t possible when our mothers were raising us.
They had to physically hover.
I have Wi-Fi.
I drove her across the province to her new school 24 days ago. I will get to see her in 9 days for Thanksgiving break. But who’s counting.
The drive home was the hardest drive I have ever made in my life. I bawled my eyes out the entire drive home. There were thunderstorms that day, and I thought how fitting, the sky was emptying all that pent-up water just as I was. We’d both be dehydrated by the time I got home.
My 19-year-old felt I was smothering and unsupportive. We had a big blow-up the week leading up to her moving. It was the most distance I have ever felt between us.
She was fighting for independence, I was white-knuckling having her close.
It was a desperate feeling. I could feel her slipping away from me.
Fuck, I’m bawling again writing this. Screw you, perimenopause, for making me an emotional basket case these days.
We packed up her things together when she welcomed me in. I made lists upon lists, she rolled her eyes. I fretted over preparing her a medicine kit and ensuring she knew what everything was for. I got a “mmhmm, I know, MOM.”
I counted how many pairs of underwear she had packed, a winter coat, footwear, school supplies.
She was spending every minute she could with friends and her boyfriend. I was crumbling inside. But I’d get the long drive with her and a few days to help her settle in.
Why does time speed up when we want it to slow down the most?
The first night when we arrived, we shared a hotel room together. I cried myself to sleep. I knew it was the last night we would be together under one roof for a while. I didn’t want her to see me cry.
That drive out repaired something between us that I think was fragmented for some time. Her wanting to be independent and me not wanting to let go created a space between us that caused friction that neither of us wanted but didn’t know how to navigate.
By the time we arrived at her new town, I felt closer to her than I have in years.
The next day was move-in day at her university. She welcomed me into this experience with her. We did all the first-day stuff together.
My picture-taking annoyed the shit out of her, but she obliged and let me “smother” her as much as I wanted that day.
I think she might have needed it that day too.
When it was time to leave her to go back to my hotel room, I damn near fell apart. I drove to the hotel and sat in my car in the parking lot for hours and just sobbed.
I didn’t want to go into the empty hotel room. I could not grasp how I was supposed to get up the next day and leave my baby there alone.
Eventually, I made it up to my room, crawled in bed and cried myself to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I texted her and asked if she was up and on the go and what she wanted to do that day.
Her reply: “Just want quality time with my mom.”
Time that day was in a vortex and hours felt like minutes.
It was time for me to leave.
We both fell apart in each other’s arms.
About 2 hours into the drive, she called me and broke down. I think this is when the reality of the move hit her.
I told her I can come back and stay for as long as she wanted. I told her that I can come back and forth every week.
It took everything in me not to turn around and just stay there for the entirety of her first semester.
Deep down she didn’t want me to come back. She just needed to know I would.
And maybe that’s the part of parenting a young adult nobody adequately explains.
For 19 years, being a good mother mostly meant being there.
They’re hungry? Feed them.
They’re sick? Take care of them.
They’re scared? Hold them.
They need you? Go.
And then one day being a good mother apparently means learning not to go.
Even when every cell in your body is screaming at you to turn the fucking car around.
She needed to know that if she said, “Mom, come get me,” I’d probably violate several traffic laws getting back across the province.
But she also needed me to keep driving.
So I did.
I cried through thunderstorms. I checked Find My iPhone an entirely reasonable and definitely-not-psychotic number of times. I counted the days until Thanksgiving.
24 days down.
9 to go.
Not that I’m counting.
Apparently I’m smothering my 19-year-old who is never home.
I’m working on it.
The smothering, I mean.
She’s doing just fine.