Born to love you

She's free from me now.

I wonder how she'll like being free, I wonder, as I climb off the sofa , languid, sad, resigned..

It could be that it will be forever.

I try not to think about that possibility.

I see twentysomething mothers with young children, and I marvel at the ease with which many conceive them, bear them, and bring them into our complex world.

You assume -- until, perhaps one day, you find that you can't assume.

Pushing grocery carts with kids strapped in at the Acme, dropping off at the nursery school, showing up for the Parent-Teacher meetings, these mothers (caregivers are still overwhemingly female) make motherhood look easy.

At least on the outside.

As will the moms and dads who show up at graduation in another few months, surrounded by relatives, eyes welling with sentimental tears.

My daughter's high school experience, as I said to her dad this morning, has been hell.

Hell for her, and hell for us.

She eats alone in the cafeteria, I heard.

What is there to celebrate, except for the (and I should be happy) fact that she doesn't take drugs, hasn't gotten pregnant, and still has dreams?

She seems precocious -- and naive at the same time, said the counselor who had met her.

What will she do with this freedom?

Liberty -- from me?

You still love her, said another friend.  You're just defending yourself right now -- because, again, and again, your heart has been broken. Loving her feels like a weight around my legs, my head, my heart.

But not loving her -- that's not an option.

Will anything impel her to reach out a hand that has, more times than not, been used to slap me down?

I dream that someday she will discover that freedom isn't all it's rumored to be by her peers.

And I wonder if that's true -- and how long I will have to wait to find out.