One More Tomorrow

I found this in a newspaper years ago.


Tomorrow is about to arrive. My first child preparing
to leave for college, and the family unit will change.
forever.

This is not a surprise to me, and yet I am deeply
surprised by how quickly this day is speeding toward
us.

I'm not quite finished with her. I feel betrayed by
time.

This is a happy and healthy step in the expected, and
hoped for, chain of milestones. She is eager and ready
to leave, but I am not nearly ready to let go.

I need to make a few more cupcakes with her, read and
recite from "Good Night Moon" and maybe create one
more fruit basket from Play-doh.

I want to tell her,"Wait a minute!" and have her stand
still. And in that time I would hurry to fill her head
with the things about life that I am afraid I forgot
to tell her. But standing still, she would reply
impatiently, "Yes, Mom, I know. You've told me."

And she would be right; but I can't help feeling that
I forgot something.

Seventeen years ago, as I stood over her crib watching
her breathe, I wrote a letter to my 4-day old infant.
It said, "These are the days when the doorknobs are
unreachable, the summer is long and tomorrow takes
forever to arrive."

In this letter I told her of the plans and dreams I
had for the two of us. I promised her tea parties in
the winter and tents in the spring. We would do art
projects and make surprises for her daddy. And I
promised her experience. We would examine sand and
flowers and rocks and snowflakes. We would smell the
grass, the ocean and burning wood.

I would have the gift of learning about our world once
again, as she absorbed it for the first time.

We experienced so much more that I promised on that
night long ago. We endured many of life's painful
interruptions. When the continuity of our plans had to
pause to accommodate sorrow, we grew from the shared
hurt and the coping.

I never promised her that all of our experiences would
be happy, just that her father and I would be there
with unquestioning support.

When this tomorrow is actually here, I will keep the
final promise I made to my baby daughter. In the
letter I told her, "I will guide you as safely as I
can to the threshold of adulthood; and there, I will
let you go...for the days quickly pass when doorknobs
are unreachable, summers are long and tomorrow takes
forever to arrive."

As I prepare to let her go, I reflect upon her first
day of kindergarten, when I, like countless mothers
before me, said good-bye to a tearful child and went
back to look in the school window a few minutes later.
I needed to know if she was still crying. I believe in
September, when I leave this child at her college
dorm, she will slip down to the parking lot and find
me there, crying.

Seventeen years ago I watched her breathe. Tomorrow, I
will watch her fly.