Letting Go...

I just read what another mother wrote the other day "I have realized that parenting is just constantly having to learn to let go, little by little". At first I though "Whatever". Then the more I really thought about it, that is SO true! First as a mother you cary the baby in your womb, no one else can hold, feel, or feed the baby. Then you give birth. You have to "let go" of having that baby inside, doctors and nurses, the father, other realtives, and friends all get to hold the baby, maybe even feed her. Eventually you have to leave the baby in the care of someone else. Then the baby learns to sit, then crawl, then walk and suddenly they don't need you as much, you again have to let go, you are forced to no longer have complete control of protecting you child, after all babies DO fall quite a bit and you can never be right there every second. Up to this point "letting go" is not real hard. But then...they start school, gasp. Bethanie starting school was really hard for me. I had been home with her since she left the NICU, and other than family and one very close friend who would watch her from time to time, she was ALWAYS with me. Then she started school, for 7 hours 5 days a week I had no control over what she was doing, who she was doing it with, what she was eating, so many things were out of my control, even her safety. I LOVED her teacher and have all 3 years she has been in school. I quickly learned that I could trust the school, they had Bethanie and all the other kids' best interest in mind. I felt they would do what ever they could to keep her safe and still give her a good education. I thought I was for the most part past having to "let go" for a while.

That leads us up to today. Today Bethanie will be riding the bus home from school. I am not sure why I am so overly nervous about it but I REALLY am. After all I rode the bus from the time I was in kindergarten till I graduated from high school and I only remember 2 bad things happening in all those years. 1. a boy lit a cigerette on the bus and smoked it, he didn't try to get anyone else to join him or anything but since we all saw him do it and not tell on him, we all got lectured. 2. I saw a friend's dog get run over right in front of us by another bus. My friend saw it too, it was very tramatic as a child. And those are the only 2 things I can think of happening while on the bus in the 13 years I rode. I can actually remember many more fun times on the bus than bad times. That doesn't help though.

I know, in part, my worry has to do with how quiet and shy Bethanie is. I worry that if they pass our house, she won't say anything. I also worry about the other kids on the bus. A bus driver has to keep her eyes on the road, she cannot possibly know everything that goes on on the bus. I guess most of my worry is simply having to "let go", giving someone that I do not know much about at all, the controll of my baby girl, my former teeny tiny little preemie baby girl.

Letting them grow up is SOOO hard, yet we really don't have any way of keeping them from it, do we? Once I get past this, which I hope goes very smoothly, then we will move on to the even more difficult things such as letting them spend the night with friends and (oh dear God help me) DRIVE, ahhhhh.