Lifestyle
Rachael’s first child has just flown the nest and it’s all the feels
Every parent knows this day is coming – and we’d be concerned if it didn’t – but that doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier.
By Rachael Mogan McIntosh
Our eldest child Ivy called from Albania yesterday to describe her eventful evening, which had featured a long date with an attractive American. Things were going well, she said, the chemistry excellent, and at 3am in the hostel dorm corridor a goodnight kiss felt imminent. Until a receptionist ran through the middle of them, scattering pheromones to the four walls as he shouted ‘Fire! Fire!’ The hostel was, literally, on fire.
Ivy sent videos over WhatsApp of the flames, the firefighters and the evacuation scene. She made lots of enthusiastic jokes, while on the other side of the world, her father Keith and I laughed, and then took turns calming each other’s frazzled nerves.
Long bus rides and even longer nights
Ivy arrived in Albania a few days ago, after a 13-hour overnight bus trip from Athens, during which she texted me the play-by-play of her long, sleepless night as I went about my workday. It had been a gruelling journey.
The lady behind yelled at Ivy in Greek when she reclined her seat, and the bus left rural rest stops without warning, making toilet breaks a risky endeavour. The bus station in Albania’s capital city was out of town and Ivy had to invent a fake boyfriend to deter an amorous taxi driver. At the hostel, there was no food, she couldn’t drink the water and there was a three hour wait for a bed.
And a final straw: she tried to make friends with a cat, who scratched her and was at that very moment perched, glaring, at the end of her threadbare couch. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Ivy said. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying.’
Mate, I said, I would have been crying 14 hours ago! Then I went into Mum mode: ‘You’re safe. You’ve arrived. Everything is fine. You just need a big, long sleep and then tomorrow is another day.’ Yes, Mum, Ivy gulped through her tears. And then she paused. ‘Although I did see a sign in the lobby that there’s a Beer Pong contest tonight.’
Time is a rubber band
Our girl turned 19 just weeks ago in Paris and she’s been regaling us with her backpacking shenanigans for a few months now. For me, time is a rubber band. I miss all the versions of Ivy: the sleep-hating baby who could fight her way out of any swaddle, the toddler whose catchphrase was ‘I like-a do my own thing, OK?’, and the seven-year-old who wore a feather she called Fevver in her ponytail to school every day.
I miss the 11-year-old who stuck a Hunger Games archer’s arrow down the side of her boot as she marched into primary school in France, where she had to dig deep and stand up to a schoolyard bully.
I miss small Ivy and her bestie Scout marching about the backyard singing the theme song of their club, the Nerd University of Unicornia, and I miss the teenage singers she and Scout became: Ivy blowing the roof off the school hall in her brilliant, comedic turn in Pirates of Penzance, Scout travelling China with her choir, and the two of them holding their own Phantom of The Opera themed musical night at a local café. Scout is now in Melbourne studying screenwriting, and Ivy just got accepted to film school in Sydney, but the tiny versions of them live forever in my mind.
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From director to audience
Parenting calls to mind that old joke: the best way to make God laugh is to make a plan. Children reveal themselves to us in young adulthood, often in the most surprising of ways. Watching them grow into their adult selves is a sort of unravelling, a deconstructing of the future you imagined, as the one they are independently creating grows clearer and diverts away from your own ideas. It’s a slow passing over of control as you steadily, incrementally make yourself redundant until one day the baby who wouldn’t sleep is in Albania texting you ‘funny story Mum!’ about that time her dorm burnt down.
The anxiety I feel about Ivy’s travels is my backpack to carry; not hers. Watching children flee the nest is both wonderful and painful. It’s a reminder that we’re only charged with being the minders of these souls for a short time, after which we shift to a ringside seat. From directors to supporting players: the way it should be. I like how the poet Donne captures it:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
Not a breach, but an expansion. A distance that widens the camera shot, throws our relationship into a different light, and gives us a chance to miss each other, something that is impossible in the constant forward-motion of everyday life.
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Ivy’s presence is a ghost in the house, carting armfuls of snacks and coffee out to her caravan so she can finish watching The Godfather and then seven hours of YouTube analysis about it; and the house still holds the life-force, somehow, of her comedy bits, her show tunes and her rough-housing cuddle-puddles on the couch with the dog and her adored little sister.
The wings were always hers
She’ll be back soon, and like all young adults, Ivy will probably bounce back and forth a few more times until some final exit. I won’t quite relax until she’s home, but I’m so proud of our adventurer, of her courage and her chutzpah, despite the small pang that she will never be under our wings again in quite the same way, clutching Fevver or calling out for a last kiss goodnight. ‘Mummy, Daddy, wait! Did you know I like-a do my own fing?’
Feature image: iStock/Miljan Živković
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