I couldn’t make it stop. Even though I had been in bed for two hours, my mind wouldn’t stop running through the possible interview questions and how best to answer them. I had spent two months prepping for the next day, thinking, getting feedback from people, running through questions and answers. Now, sleep evaded me as I ran back answers and tried to craft them as eloquently as possible.
Two interviews the next morning had the possibility of making the dream college affordable, except I wouldn’t even be there. My oldest child would be interviewing, and I’d be somewhere else, waiting powerless. Was he ready? Am I ready?
All of the preparation I had put into helping him—the arrangement of mock interviews, the practice sessions, the discussions, the wardrobe shopping, the reminders—paled in comparison to the ways I had been preparing for the past eighteen years. When I thought he was the one who needed to hear the stories about characters transitioning from childhood to adulthood, I was actually hearing how to be the parent of a child becoming an adult. I have a whole library of stories that made their way into my bones, a whole community of literary friends who have imprinted on my heart what it’s like to come of age as a mom.
You could tell me that no matter what a mother loves her children, but it takes a story to show me how painful that could be and what it means. Or maybe you tell me that it’s good for my children to suffer losses and failures; that they’ll learn how to pick themselves up if they only get to experience life’s challenges. I’d say it makes sense but it takes a story for me to understand the real value behind it. I could learn as I go and fumble blindly along the way, or I could walk in the shoes of many mothers who’ve gone ahead of me and have a story to tell me of how to become the mom of adults.
I learned from Marmee how to step back and let my children experience both failures and successes. Marmee showed me that our children don’t need us to help them avoid failure; instead, they need us to love them after inevitable failure. They need us to remind them of our humanity and that we can’t do everything perfectly.
Matthew and Marilla showed me to enjoy the interruptions of our children as they grow. Sometimes the desire for independence means messes and accidents, but that’s ok. Our lives are enriched by children—small and grown ones—even when we have to clean something up afterwards.
Aunt Polly had taught me that our children are not lumps of clay that we are forming into a shape we determine. They are not an extension of mom and dad (nor of a loving aunt) but their own person with their own will, strengths, and weaknesses. They have their own path filled with pains and sufferings they have to traverse as they grow.
I sobbed with Nia when she went to her son night after night after he had committed the gravest of sins. Her resolve to tell her son his name spoke more to me than any parenting book I’ve read. I knew in that moment I would not be able to control what sins my children would commit but that I could love and claim them still. Nia taught me that a mother can extend grace undeserved because of the love of a good, holy Maker.
These stories of moms, parents, and caregivers of children entering adulthood have enlarged my heart. They’re revealed my sin. They’re reminded me of my weakness and limitations. They’ve reminded me that I’m connected to mothers both past and future. And maybe best of all, they’ve shown me again and again, that I’m not the author of my story, nor of my children’s story.
There have been times that I wished my children were delivered holding a user’s manual that told me how to raise them well. But humans aren’t formulaic, and children certainly aren’t programmable. Despite how convenient it seems to have a manual, God’s way is better. We’re walking paths unknown, trusting the Lord for each next step. We’re living in real-time with no guarantee of outcomes or events. We’re turning the pages in our own stories, and we won’t find out what tomorrow brings even a day early. Just like reading the stories of all my fellow sojourners in parenting, I can only see what’s before me right now.
We’ve been inching closer towards this next stage of life through so many lessons and experiences. Stories have given me fellow companions to hold my hand as I walk from one stage of parenting to the next. Sure, I’ve read to the children for their sake all those years, but I also read for me. All those days reading to my kids were training me for this day. He’s ready, whether he knows it or not. I’m ready whether I know it or not. This is what we wanted all along, for him to grow up. And now, it’s time I, too, come of age. I’m the mom of a man now. He can do it. So can I.
The Burkes lived overseas for three years and have been to almost 20 countries together, surviving some adventures they will never speak of to the grandparents.
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