Being a parent starts with our letting go of the baby from the womb in order to be able to hold onto him in our arms. And that’s just the beginning. The journey of parenthood consists of learning when to hold on and when to let go of our children.
Robert Frost’s poem “Wild Grapes” describes a young girl and her big brother picking wild grapes growing in the crown of a birch tree. Because she was small, he had to hold a branch down for her to reach them. Once she grasped the branch, he let go, only to watch the branch catch her up, as though she were a fish and “it was the fishpole.”
The rest of the poem hilariously describes the older boy’s efforts to return his pesky sister to earth, and ends with her more serious contemplation about the necessity of letting go. She muses, “I had not learned to let go with the hands, as I still have not learned to with the heart.”
So there’s the rub. We parents are continually learning to “let go with the hands” in our everyday lives with our kids—offering more freedom, allowing children to make mistakes and suffer the consequences, always stepping back as kids experience some freedom to discover who they are.
But at the same time, parents are holding on with their hearts—redoubling our commitment to our children’s wellbeing each time we watch them struggle. Especially when our children face challenges, we hold them tighter than ever in our hearts.
For most of us, the holding on comes more naturally than the letting go. Letting go is terrifying. Leaving a child at kindergarten, watching as our adolescent drives away with her brand new driver’s license, saying goodbye at the college freshman dorm—these experiences threaten to rip us apart with the sense of danger we experience.
And yet, these episodes of letting go are necessary to provide our children the life we dream of for them. I recalled this fact as I watched a lovely golden leaf separate itself from the oak in my back yard and gracefully waft its way to the grass. It reminded me of this quote which resonated with me: “Autumn is the time when the leaves teach us the beauty of letting go.”