Leaving/Letting Go

As a daughter I was always leaving.
Then I became a mother and I learned you can’t leave, but you have to let go.
You have to be there like a rock letting go.

I had to let my babies out when the time came.  I fought, oh yes, I struggled and screamed out my pain, but in the end they had their way. For nine months my body had held another, the most perfect union I‘d ever known, but when they decided it was time, I had to let them go. Head first they crawled out, and I was alone again.

I couldn’t leave the house even while they slept. When they wanted to eat, I had to feed them, but when they wanted to sleep, I had to let them go into a dreamscape from which I was excluded. They woke me up whenever they felt like it, but I couldn’t wake them if I wanted their company.

They begged me to let them go. Out the door, down the street, into a world that could do them harm. They wanted to wander through shadowed woods or jump into pools of water. I was beside myself with terror, but they pleaded so hard I let them go.

The older they got the more wreckless they became. First it was climbing trees, then it was riding around on wheels, and one day it was a metal machine that sped through the streets, a weapon of mass destruction. It seemed incomprehensible, but I had to let them go.

And all the while I was still a daughter, and I wanted to leave.
I had to stay, even if I stayed alone.
I had to stay so I could be there like a rock letting go.

Someday, I was assured, I would be able to leave.
Someday they’d be so far gone that I could leave.

Someday has come and gone, but I’m still here letting go.
My daughter keeps leaving, but when I try to leave she stamps her feet.
My son cannot seem to go. He needs me to be here to answer his calls.
Every day I plan to leave but I am told it would destroy them.
If I leave their world will crumble.

So I stay. There is nothing here for me anymore, but I must stay until someone or something takes me away.

Only when going is not an act of leaving can I go.
I can never leave. I have to be here like a rock, letting go.