Today’s post is brought to you by the series finale of Stranger Things.
No, really.
Don’t worry – there are no spoilers.
How are you doing, Gen X? I’m emotionally wounded by the weight of it all, and after an entire day of trying to process, I might be ready to approach it. The brilliance of this series in general and the finale in particular was the coming-of-age theme, and as a mom whose youngest is graduating high school in a year and a half, it hit pretty hard. The nostalgia for my own youth, combined with having watched these characters grow up on screen really drove home the fact that my own children are growing up. That’s … a lot. The Stranger Things finale didn’t just make me emotional about the characters; it made me confront something I’ve been quietly avoiding: my kids are almost all grown, and my life is changing whether I’m ready or not.
They chose some amazing music to really drive home the emotional punch of this episode. And it keeps playing in my head as I keep thinking about how close I am to the end of my journey as a mother to little ones: permission slips, packed lunches, open houses, school events … and as I go down that rabbit hole, I start to think about all the times it was the last time for something, but I didn’t know it:
the last time they put their arms up to be held,
the last time they asked me to play Barbies,
the last time we danced to Laurie Berkner in the living room,
the last time we watched Steve on Blue’s Clues,
the last time I held a tiny human close to my heart to sleep,
the last time I pushed them on the swings and they shouted, “Higher, Mommy!” – before life slowly carried them farther forward than I could reach …
“Well, I’ve been afraid of changing cause I’ve built my life around you … “
It’s true. I have built my life around my children. It’s all I’ve known for so long, and all that has mattered. It’s who I am and all I strive to be. They are – quite literally – my life and my greatest joy. And yes, I am afraid of changing, because the truth is … I don’t know who I am outside of this. And that scares me sometimes, and makes me try to hold onto the memories a little tighter.
“But time makes you bolder, even children get older …”
While you’re not looking, they do just that. They get older. It was easier to not deal with that as my older children graduated, because I still had the younger ones who needed me and I could avoid facing the enormity of the feelings as they grew up. They were all there, but the immediacy of still being in the trenches of mom-ing younger kids helped me push off dealing with it.
Until now.
Suddenly I have no other younger child left after my “baby” graduates next year. What do you do when all you’ve ever done and been is no longer needed? And yet, that was the ultimate goal and it’s what you want for them, to go live their lives and be happy. I think that’s the giant catch-22 that no one tells you is at the end of raising your children: you don’t get to keep any version of them, and you’re left trying to figure out where you fit in the world.
“And I’m getting older too …”
That too. I am getting older. I can’t even pretend anymore that I’m not. What’s left? What do I do now? Who am I now, and what does life hold outside of those magical years of raising my beautiful children? Apparently my next season will be streaming sooner than I wanted to realize, but it’s up to me to choose the direction my show goes in.
(Lyrics from “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac – Stevie Nicks)