A recent post by one of our favorite bloggers, Issa Mas, the mom behind Single Mama NYC.
Theo goes for his monthly weekend visitation at his father’s today. It will be his third time. The last two months I didn’t handle visitations so well. In February I spent the 48 hours preceding his visitation sleepless, in panic attack mode, and physically sick with worry.
In March? Only marginally better. And by that I mean hardly at all.
Today, though? Today I am going to put on my “big girl panties,” and grow up. Are my palms still sweating like mad due to the anxiety of it all? Uhm, yeah. Sweating like crazy. I don’t want to let go of Theo, ever, and least of all to someone whose parental judgment is so VASTLY different from my own. I. Don’t. Wan’t. To. Let. Go! And yet, I must. This will be good training for the future.
There will be more and more instances in this Mama’s life, in which I will have to let go of my Pun’kin, whether I like it or not. For his benefit. Not for mine, not yet. Leave it up to me and I’d be the psycho, overbearing mom who still takes her son to his doctor’s appointments in his 30s. Yeah, that’s right, I said 30s. (Stop looking at me like that.) For my son, though, for Theo to have a happy and healthy life, I must let him go–in increments, age appropriately, but let him go I must. And this one weekend a month away from me at a home I have no control over, well, talk about the ultimate training ground. It would seem that not only is my little guy growing up, but his Mama is, too.
I’m not saying that I won’t tear up as I watch my little guy walking away from me while holding his father’s hand. I’m not saying I won’t go back upstairs and face the stillness of my home with a deep sense of dread. I’m not saying that my palms won’t sweat with anxiety the entire time he’s gone like they did the last two months. I don’t know that I’ll feel any differently at all, but what I do know is that I am going to try to use this experience to strengthen myself, and not allow it to make me come undone anymore. This is our new reality, and like it or not I must accept it with much more grace than I have up until now. As you can see, like everything else in life, it’s still a work in progress, but at least I feel up to the task.
In the end, there isn’t anything I won’t do for my boy–even if it means letting him go.
Issa M. Mas is a freelance writer who publishes the memoir-in-the-making, Single Mama NYC, as well as the resource site, Your Single Parenting. She lives in her native New York City with her son.
