A mother’s burden is learning to let child go
Our mailbox is filled with colorful postcards, official-looking letters and glossy brochures from colleges all over the country. Each day the postman leaves more choices from farther and farther away — the University of Oregon, Wichita State, Fordham University, William & Mary, Boston University. There are invitations to campus tours in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, summer classes at Stanford and Brown.
I thumb through the day’s offerings before I hand them over to my 16-yearold son.
Part of me wishes I could throw them in the trash instead.
The brochures in the mailbox mark a countdown of sorts. Soon Sawyer will graduate and be off to college and then out into the world on his own.
I've spent 16 years keeping him safe. I plugged electrical outlets and installed safety locks on kitchen cabinets (which I then couldn’t open either, by the way). I fenced the pool, slathered him in sunscreen, helmeted his head and installed a GPS locator on his cellphone.
Oh, there have been broken bones and broken hearts. But for the most part, he made it through childhood unscathed.
Thinking I might be able to keep him from going away is ridiculous, I realize. I might as well try to stop time. Countless kids go away to college and go on to live happy lives.
Sawyer’s ready to be off into the world. I’m just not sure I am.
Of course this has been on my mind recently as I’ve worked, as I’ve been interviewing people. As often happens, I got some perspective, quickly.
A couple of those interviews were with a pastor I met in Prescott. I had been worried about Sawyer going to New York or Oregon. Clovis Barnett’s daughter went to Congo.
Sarah, 21, a student at Baylor Univer- sity in Texas, volunteered with an organization called Global Fingerprints, a child-sponsorship ministry. (You know, one of those agencies that asks for a few dollars a month for food and schooling for a child in a place like Congo.)
Sarah and others went to remote villages to meet with the children, assess how they were doing and take pictures for sponsors back in the States. She also volunteered in Kinshasa at a place called the Tabitha Center, where local women
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