When you make the choice to fully immerse yourself in something, there is a shift within your cells that is terrifying and exciting in equal measure.

In the moment that you decide to go all in, to play full on, there is terror in the knowing that you will lose something of yourself in the process, and that you will gain something too. The fear is in the stepping off. In that free-falling moment when you don’t know quite where you will land, or even how. Will you spring as light as a gymnast on the lush grass, or will it be more like the first time you bring your Christmas-drone in for landing, shaky and off centre, with the no-rain-for three-weeks crispy weeds spraying out in all directions?

A fledgling project, an expensive purchase, a shiny new relationship. They all create the nervicitement of: new me/old me. And right there in the moment between the two, is where the juice is. And that juice is the sweetest and most luscious of all.

In a dusty box at the back of  my mind there is a creature called the Push Me Pull You. I think it could be from Sesame Street, or maybe it lives with Dr.Doolittle, but in my memory it has one body and two heads, facing in opposite directions. So if one head wants to move forward, the other must go backwards.

Jumping in feels a lot like what the poor Push Me Pull You must always have a sense of. In order to move at all, the backward facing head has to trust, and step into the vulnerability of not quite knowing where it’s going, or what the ground is like. It can only feel the irregularity once it carefully places its tiny cloven hoof on the uneven ground. And the forward head has to be sure to lead in the best direction, dealing with whatever comes up in each moment, and making decisions the backward head can’t help with.

Today I sat on the stairs and watched my little girl grow up before my eyes. She went into her bedroom in a flurry of iridescent flamingo pink, and emerged with only a blush of subtle rose on her shoes-a nod to the the days of childhood that she inhabited only moments before.

I sat on the stairs and watched her gather her bag, count her money and smooth her hair. I saw the confident step of the woman she will become, going out into the world without me by her side, her only compass the words we have shared over the years, and the direction she chooses to steer on her own.

I sat on the stairs leaning on my sandy summer-knees, pulled by the heaviness in my heart, as I thought of the way the world looks at her, both real and imagined, and the judgements she will face. I remembered all the times she has cried about how people stare at her, or ask her why she is yellow. And I guessed at all the times she didn’t cry, but pushed the dark feelings deep down into her gall bladder, and smiled the sunshine of defiance.

I sat on the stairs, and the stairs stretched out in front of me like a dark Dr.Suess movie, a conveyor belt of the endless nights and days where I will watch her take that ebullient step over the threshold, without looking back, out, out into her life.

As it should be.

I sat on the stairs and I knew in that moment that my little girl needs very little from me these days. She knows her own heart and her mind is stronger than a nine year old mind ever should be, and that is how this world turns. My little girl is no longer little.

I sat on the stairs and thought of a mother I know very little of, who made a choice this very day to jump off into the abyss of blissful anaesthesia. A mother who knew that no matter how long she sat on the stairs, her little girl was not coming back. I thought of Debbie and her broken heart and I had a tinkling of what that rancid loss might be like.

Can you die of a broken heart?

Can you choose when you step out of this world?

I think you can.

I hope for that mother, as she let the griefs lay all over her like a heavy and cool blanket, it was more exciting than terrifying. I hope she felt the relief.

I hope she got to taste the juice. And I hope it was sweet.

Vale Debbie. Vale Carrie. Travel well ladies.

So the kid has gone away to camp and I’m spending my day moping around the house like he’s moved out of home to go to university or worse.  I’ve been into his bedroom three times, ostensibly to put things away, I’ve re-read the book he’s writing about Minecraft (that I only slightly comprehend- it requires specific MC knowledge), just to try and get a sense of what he might be doing at camp.  What he might be feeling.  What adventures he is having.

I said this morning, “Quick. Photo opportunity.  Let me capture you in the Before.”  Usually he would try to spirit away, ’til eventually being forced into a grimace for my lens.

Instead he got very still and said, “Yes, that’s probably a good idea, because I’ll probably come back changed.”  I asked him how he would be changed.  “I’m not sure, and you might not be able to see it in a photo, but I’ll know.  I’ll probably be braver and stronger, you know, from the challenges, like, the giant swing, and stuff.  I’ll have to face the fear to get the exhilaration.”

What a weird kid.

But he’s right, on every count.  He can be a bit of a scaredy-cat with some things (like crazy rides).  And then mature and brave beyond his years with others (insights, being independent and self-determined, patiently waiting in all of the reception rooms with his sister for years, patiently waiting for puberty…)

So we took some pics.

A kid, ready for change

Now he’s gone and I’m sitting here in his bedroom that is so full of the empty, wondering how parents do this.  How do they send their children off into the world, to uni, to share houses, to the world?  Perhaps that’s what the teenage years are for, so they shit you so much that you can’t wait for them to leave.

Until they do leave.  And then you are left with a bedroom that finally smells better, but is full of dusty drum kits, fading Hot Wheels posters that are curling at the corners, and memories.  All of the memories.  Of sprained ankles and chipped teeth, muddy footy boots and magic shows, home rock concerts and errant bits of Lego, solar powered creations and tennis rackets and spy books and iPods and too-loud music and shrieking clarinets and pounding drums and dirty-guitar feedback and sandy floors and grotty science experiments.

The noise and the mess and the exploration of childhood. The fun and the joy and the laughter and the boredom and the exasperation and the explanations and the boundaries to be set, and then tested, and tested again.  The bedlam that fills your parental life and your heart so full that it might split it’s skin.  Until they leave, and it all drains away in that very next heartbeat, and you are left with a room.  Just a room after all.

This time, he will be back soon, before I even know it really, and I will take another photograph…this time.

We will examine that photo closely, he and I, heads bent together, short-sighted brown eyes squinting slightly, to see if we can see the markings of how he has changed.  For he will have changed, a little or a lot, and I wonder what our eyes will see.

Do you have kids that are growing up too fast?  Or not fast enough?

…From The Ashers xx

At school this morning there was a cute toddler playing next to the sand pit.  She had those chubby little legs with no knees that really don’t flex properly, so she waddled around with that helpless, defenceless, gait that new walkers have.  She had milky skin that the sun hasn’t really fluttered over yet.  Her Mum had wrangled her hair on top of her head into a spiky blonde whale spout.  She ate sand.

I watched her from my vantage near the play equipment of death monkey bars (not yet banned) as she swelled in confidence, and slowly moved further and further from her mother.  She checked over her shoulder from time to time, but she was separating.  Becoming a little bit less of her mum, and more of herself.

And, in that very instant, as I watched that puffy nappy-clad bum climb up and up and into the sandpit, I lost all my oxygen.

I looked over at the mother who was chatting with some others about the coolchange/homework/whostocksthebestchillijam and I saw that she missed it.  She missed the moment when her little girl realised she was her own person.  She made her own choice.  She chose her own path.

Sure, there will be more.  There will be fights and disagreements and negotiations and compromises that number the hundreds (and yet they will feel like millions).  Where they will pull apart, and come back together, like a piano accordion.  Sometimes they will make a strange music of their very own, and sometimes it will just be a bloody big gush of hot air.  Yet this moment, this very moment passed in a beat, and she missed it.

Just like I probably missed the moments my own children become their own selves, and a little less of me.

And that made me lose my breath.