It occurred to me today that childhood is the long process of separating from your mother — first from her body, physically, and then slowly, over many years, emotionally, moving from her life into your own.

I’ve always listened when parents say the years go by quickly, but I’ve never heard, not until now, when my older son is taking his first tentative steps away from me. He still loves me desperately, as all young children love their parents, but I’ve seen in his eyes that we are, for the first time, differentiating. He has always had a strong personality, a list of likes and dislikes as clear and immutable as a stone etching. But he has never felt this separate from me, in a place where I cannot reach, until now.

“Do you want to hear ‘Baby Beluga’?” I asked him the other night at bedtime. It was the song I’d sung to him each night for the first three years of his life, one of the few songs my shaky voice could master. The song — about a wild, free soul — is as much a part of me as is my own heart, and I will be able to sing it on my deathbed, even if I live to 101.

Is the water warm?

Is your mama home with you so happy?

But when I offered to sing it again, this time to an older boy, he just stared.

“What’s ‘Baby Beluga’?” he asked.

Those moments I spent, holding him, freshly bathed, slowly rocking him on my lap until his eyes fluttered closed, those moments for him have gone, to wherever memories go in a child’s mind when room must be made for other experiences, for memories without their parents.

The realization might have made me sad, the understanding that he’s drifting away, further each day, from the time when we were so linked, he and I. But it didn’t. I’m eager to see the product of his transformation. Both of my children appear anew to me each day, and they amaze me with what they learn and think, the ways they show themselves to be so like me and yet so different.

I am a partner in those discoveries, but more a silent one now, watchful, doing little of note other than trying not to erect obstacles. My role in the performance of their childhood will be more important than most others, but now I see the curtain call, and the goal: a person who can stand by, and with, himself.

It’s pressure, a bit, to think of being so instrumental in someone’s becoming, but despite my anxieties, I know my children could do worse for a mother.

After all, I understand my job: to simultaneously hold them close and yet also to push them away, just a touch, a millimeter more each day. I have to let them struggle, and no matter how much I want to, I cannot always interfere. I cannot wrap them up inside me anymore. They’ll face much in the world, fully apart from me, and they must feel up to the task.

With boys, it’s challenging to find the equilibrium, the perfect balance between closeness and distance. The world tells boys that men should not need anyone, especially their mothers, but we all know that’s a lie. Boys need closeness as much as girls do, even when they pretend to want distance. But a mother must also find the natural space between her and her son. There is a place that needs to be empty so he can grow into it, a hollowness that he sees I am confident he can fill.

It stings, sometimes, to be reminded that every day I’m closer to being fired from my job. I’m propping him up, but one day he’ll stand on his own.

When our children are babies, we try hard to get them to walk to us. We hold out our arms and encourage them to let go. We tell them with our words and our eyes that they can take steps, they can propel themselves forward, resting only on their own two feet.

As they age, we must pull back, farther and farther, and let them step even more into the void.

“How strong is a black hole?” my son wonders to me. “Is it stronger than a nuclear bomb, stronger than a rocket?”

He’s fascinated by and scared of black holes, of the uncertain space inside them.

We’re all afraid, as children, of going out, of separating. In growing up, there’s sadness. There’s grief. It’s the trauma we all suffer.

But, as with all transformations, there is thrill. There is joy.

There is becoming.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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