Fraying

This morning, at 7.25, he walked out the door and didn't even look back. He was a little early, but wanted to make sure he didn't miss his bus. I watched him walk down the hill from the living room window with a mixture of pride and maternal dread. Yes, my eldest child has today started secondary school.

As I anxiously watch the clock and try to picture where he is at this very moment, what he's doing and who he is with, I hope I'm the furthest thing from his mind. Like thousands of other mothers up and down the country, I have been preparing for this day for a very long time. Yet somehow, you never really think it will arrive.

For some reason, as I was laying out his new uniform and labelling everything in the vain hope that at least some of it will come back, I kept thinking about his feet. This is partly because he now has feet almost as big as mine and I keep going to put on his converse instead of my own. But it's also because I remember the tiny, soft newborn feet that I used to squidge and kiss. How he'd slowly wriggle his toes as if they were tentacles feeling the air. And now he has giant boy feet, and his shoes look like canoes parked by the door. What strikes me about this, and makes me strangely sad, is that I can't remember the inbetween phases. It's like his feet have gone from tiny, in-the-palm-of-your-hand miracles, to humungous, stinky proper feet. The years inbetween these two states seem less tangible and impossible to pin down.

Of course, I remember feeling anxious about his first day at primary school, too. I remember vividly thinking that from now on, my precious first born would be influenced by the wider world, and how much I did not like the concept. And I remember realising that letting children grow up is a series of letting go's. It's not so much a case of cutting the apron strings, as gently and relentlessly fraying them, thread by thread. Hopefully, the child barely notices as each tiny strand loosens and gives until one day, they're grown and independent. This is the right and natural process of things. Honest. What I didn't realise is that this process is not passive on the parents' part. It's a choice. You have to wait for the right time, judge how many threads to loosen, and do so without grimacing. That last bit is bloody hard.

As my son ran off towards his future this morning, I was grimacing pretty hideously behind his back. I no longer worry that he'll be influenced by the wider world. Now I worry that he'll embrace it fully and I'll lose more of him than I'm ready for. Because that is key, I think. You have to loosen the threads when they are ready, whether you are or not. You have to pretend that you know what you're doing, even when you're flailing around obsessing about feet.

So when my son trudges back up the hill this afternoon, I will make him a cup of tea and try not to quiz him. I'll ask him about his day and take whatever information he decides to share. I'll try not to quiz him on the other children, or enquire if they're 'nice', in the hope that he'll tell me if anyone has flushed his head down the toilet or dangled him from a window by his ankles. But accepting at the same time that I will now know much less about his school life, and that I will rapidly become an embarassment.

I will comfort myself by seeing that there are still plenty of strands left, and I'll always have photos of those precious little feet.