I remember the first time I held my daughter’s hand. She was just minutes old, and I knew nothing about babies, so I was impressed to find that even a newborn could hold on. “Look, she’s holding my hand!” I exclaimed to myself, to the air, to anyone in the room. That she could cling to me and me to her was the most natural thing in the world, it turned out. It comes to us from the unknown depths of our biology, pre-birth. Our first skill is hanging on, no practice necessary. What I didn’t know yet was that learning to let go would also come easily, maybe naturally, to her. That she would master it quicker than me.
I know every time I’ve let go of Zelda, in fact, what’s actually happened is that she let go of me, and I simply allowed it, overcoming my natural inclinations to cling, to hold tight. I felt her pull away from me as she stood up on her fat wobbly legs to walk for the first time, and I worried that she would fall. She did, of course, fall down, and though she cried real tears of failure and frustration, and though she looked over at me, she didn’t reach for me. She didn’t need me, not right that second. She told me then what I didn’t want, couldn’t stand to hear, not yet, not yet: “Sometimes, I need you; sometimes I do not.”
I let her arms disentangle from my own in a swimming pool, her confidence in the floaters strapped to her was so much stronger than my own. She floated; she floats.
I remember almost nothing of the first day I took her to school, at 16 months old, beyond the image of her little turquoise dress fluttering in the wind as she took her teacher’s hand and walked away from her father and me without a word of goodbye. The rest of the day, beyond her walking away, the gate banging shut, closing me off, sending me home, is a blur. Many of my best and most acute memories of her are this: she turned away from me.
Just this morning I took her to school a few minutes early, had a conference with her teacher while she played with her friends in the other room. “Come say goodbye, don’t leave without saying goodbye,” she said, looking over her shoulder at me as we split up. Twenty minutes later, armed with the overwhelming joy of her progress report, I wandered across the hall, to where she was now seated with 10 other children, doing a puzzle, where the goal was to put together a bear, only five pieces, dressed in a tutu. She had the head and the feet already locked in, and was puzzling over the middle section when I came to her. “I came to say goodbye,” I knelt down to her, touching her face. I saw her little shoulder shrug me away, her concentration has improved: just last year, her teacher told me in the conference, any interruption broke her away from her work. Now, she is focused, she was focused on the bear, not me. What she requested just minutes before—to see me once more before I left—she no longer wanted or needed. Only I needed it.
I know every time I’ve let go of Zelda, in fact, what’s actually happened is that she let go of me, and I simply allowed it, overcoming my natural inclinations to cling, to hold tight. I felt her pull away from me as she stood up on her fat wobbly legs to walk for the first time, and I worried that she would fall. She did, of course, fall down, and though she cried real tears of failure and frustration, and though she looked over at me, she didn’t reach for me. She didn’t need me, not right that second. She told me then what I didn’t want, couldn’t stand to hear, not yet, not yet: “Sometimes, I need you; sometimes I do not.”I let her arms disentangle from my own in a swimming pool, her confidence in the floaters strapped to her was so much stronger than my own. She floated; she floats.
I remember almost nothing of the first day I took her to school, at 16 months old, beyond the image of her little turquoise dress fluttering in the wind as she took her teacher’s hand and walked away from her father and me without a word of goodbye. The rest of the day, beyond her walking away, the gate banging shut, closing me off, sending me home, is a blur. Many of my best and most acute memories of her are this: she turned away from me.
Just this morning I took her to school a few minutes early, had a conference with her teacher while she played with her friends in the other room. “Come say goodbye, don’t leave without saying goodbye,” she said, looking over her shoulder at me as we split up. Twenty minutes later, armed with the overwhelming joy of her progress report, I wandered across the hall, to where she was now seated with 10 other children, doing a puzzle, where the goal was to put together a bear, only five pieces, dressed in a tutu. She had the head and the feet already locked in, and was puzzling over the middle section when I came to her. “I came to say goodbye,” I knelt down to her, touching her face. I saw her little shoulder shrug me away, her concentration has improved: just last year, her teacher told me in the conference, any interruption broke her away from her work. Now, she is focused, she was focused on the bear, not me. What she requested just minutes before—to see me once more before I left—she no longer wanted or needed. Only I needed it.
by Laura June, The Awl | Read more:
Image: uncredited
