Things can be terrible, and then they gradually become amazing

Maybe the greatest gift we can give them is to let them fall.

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On our last day in Washington last month, we took a walk in a wildlife refuge near my in-law’s house at sunset. Despite what the photos might suggest, it isn’t remote. In fact, its close proximity to I-5, a major interstate highway at the southern end of Puget Sound, makes its untouched, almost otherworldly beauty all the more remarkable.

The ebb and flow of the tide is dramatic here. When it’s out, the marsh creates a landscape that looks foreign and surreal. The barren, dead branches jutting upwards from the ground resemble erected totems. When the tide comes in, the stillness of the water looks like glass. You can experience both low and high tide extremes during this 4.5 mile walk if you time it when the tide is in motion.

We’ve been here before, once in winter many years ago. The boardwalk was icy in patches and I couldn’t stop marveling at the hoar frost forming on the ground cover.

In summer at dusk, it’s all golden pink. There’s something about the light and the wide open grasslands that remind me of New England. Maybe it’s the massive white-washed barns that sit as twin anchors on the reserve. I think I read that this land was once a farm before it became an estuary. I can see it.

As we walked the path, we were greeted by some of the thorniest, gnarled blackberry bushes we’d ever seen in Washington.

Please save the berries for the wildlife, the signs say.

It’s hard to resist plucking the fruit, especially when they’re growing wild and abundant like the weeds that blackberry bushes are. But we leave them alone, even though the scent of sweet, sticky fruit ripening in the sun is tempting.

More than anything, I’ll think of this evening walk when I think of this past summer, a study in contrasts much like this reserve depending on the tide. Have you ever felt two opposing emotions in your gut simultaneously at once? Standing in the middle of the marshland, on that boardwalk surrounded by water, it felt like we were floating. The path has no destination. Once you reach the end, the only option is to turn back. It captured what we were feeling that summer, collectively together and alone. Our hearts heavy at the sudden imminent death of a family member, but also savoring the last few days before facing the big transitions that awaited us back home.

The day after we dropped off our youngest to college last month, I walked out of my apartment and wandered aimlessly around my neighborhood, probably looking a little lost to anyone who passed by. I buried myself in too much work that first week. But it’s always the second or third week that hits you hard because that’s when reality sinks in.

Oh, I’m really not coming home/oh, she’s really gone.

That’s when I felt the immense emptiness of the apartment. I now understand why some people turn on the TV for background noise.

You can never feel fully prepared for this milestone because the emotional well-being of your child dictates so much of how you experience it. Our oldest skipped happily off to college, but every child is different.

There’s this theory that we have lost the tolerance for seeing our kids in discomfort and that is why there is so much hovering from this generation of parents. We’re not allowing kids to struggle enough to learn how to cope, problem solve, and become independent.

But times are different. Modern life is bonkers and so much more complicated. Why wouldn’t we support our kids if we can? This is what my inner voice argues.

We’re supposed to let them flounder, make mistakes, and find their way. Maybe the greatest gift we can give them is to let them fall. I generally agree with it all, but it fights against my instincts. Nobody said any of this was easy.

We are still feeling around for the edges of our boundaries.

I feel like we’re supposed to just suck it up and pretend that letting go is easy, but the reality is that it’s been rough and even ugly at times. Some days have triggered my anxieties and it’s taken all of my strength not to run down and bring my kid home after a string of teary phone calls.

So instead, we assemble a care package of creature comforts, but it’s the hand-written letter that I tuck inside with photos that she savors the most. She tells me that it’s what she hoped was inside and it occurs to me with some remorse that in all these years, I have never written my child a letter. Isn’t that something?

I know it sounds reductive to say that the entire point—the end goal—of parenthood is to launch your kids and let them go, but I’ve been hearing this trope a lot lately. I think of mother cats who, at some point, reject and push their kittens away when it’s time to wean. It sounds so cold and harsh, but I know it’s the natural order of things.

Three weeks into September and I’m starting to feel the ground again. Four weeks in and my kid is starting to find her footing. Tears gradually turn into messages of encouraging progress. There are moments of affirmation that she is where she’s meant to be and reports that things are good. I knew that day would get here even if the road to here was bumpy.

And maybe this is what I was waiting for. I walk into her empty room, finally, and look around. I begin scrubbing her desk that has been marked with layers of paint and pencil marks—remnants of 17 years of life in that room. I scrub it all away.

The summer before they move away to college, I urge my kids to do a deep purge. I don’t want to leave their rooms exactly as they left them, frozen in time, because when they come back, they don’t come back as the same people.

Some summers fade into the blur of past memories, but I don’t think this summer will be one that I’ll forget. The whiplash of extreme emotions bouncing between immense pride, panic, and sadness was a lot all at once.

But aren’t we fortunate that we’re able to feel everything and let our feelings sit? Life comes at you in waves and perhaps I’m landing on the calm side of rough waters once again.

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Links I found interesting this week

• 30 Days (of Soup) at a Postpartum Hotel One broth in particular stuck with Taiwan-based cookbook author Clarissa Wei. (bon appetit)

  This essay reminded me of how my mother and aunt fed me bowls of homemade pumpkin porridge and seaweed soup for a month when my first child was born. And then I got nothing when the second kid came around 😂.

• Helicopter U. How it feels to be a college student whose parents can’t let go. (Slate)
  Note to self: for the love of all things holy, do not, I repeat DO NOT, do any of the things that you read here.

• Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art. To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence. (The New Yorker)
  There’s a lot of discourse on art and AI out there, but I thought this essay by Ted Chiang was an interesting read. He writes, “Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices.” Read on about his thoughts on generative-A.I. and the art of choices.

• Is eating in front of the TV really that bad for you? (BBC)
  Ever since the kids left the house, the number of times we’ve eaten at the table have been a whopping one time. Yes, we have resorted to eating most dinners on the couch, often while watching T.V.

• How a dropped bag of Cheetos had ‘world changing’ impact on life in a cave. After a visitor dropped the snack in Carlsbad Caverns, the “foreign detritus” sparked mold and microbial growth that disturbed the delicate ecosystem, the park said. (Washington Post).

• Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable. (ProPublica)
  This is so sad and also infuriating. You know what to do on Nov. 5th.