Today, our fledgling swallow chicks took to wing. It was a bittersweet experience to see them flying and swooping in the air above our yard. They were beautiful if not yet graceful and strong. They spent most of the day roosting on the gutters of my neighbor's house while Ed taped and covered the windows and doors of our house in preparation for painting it tomorrow. The mama and papa bird (and a third bird--an auntie, perhaps? a nurse bird?) continued to bring them bugs all day long in their new location. This evening, they did not return to the nest. One is roosting upon a different column in the porch but the nest is empty. Barren. No more days of watching the birds out our front window. No more days of watching the amazing aerobatics of the mama bird getting into and out of the porch and the nest while she fed her babies. They've moved on and the nest will soon be gone. In just three short weeks, these beautiful creatures went from eggs to flying. How quickly they grew.

It made me think about my own fledgling. She is pushing 8 years old now. It almost seems inconceivable to me that she was once a baby and I was once the mother of a baby. I know it happened--I have pictures to prove it--but it seems so very long ago. Long enough ago to make my memory dim. I wish I had known then that she would likely be my only child. I would have paid more attention. Written more stuff down. Taken more video. Tried harder to preserve those times. I wouldn't have been in such a rush for her to grow into the next stage and the next stage and the next stage. Now I look at her teeth that are too big for her mouth and her silky brunette hair, so thick and so straight, and wonder how she got so big.

In just about 10 or 11 years, she'll be taking to wing herself. She'll fly around close to home and just like mama bird, I'll be there to help out if she needs it, but she'll have the physical capabilities to go out on her own. Hopefully she'll spend that transition time in college so she'll have lots of options of places and things and people in her future, but it will be her choice.

Sometimes 10 years seems like an eternity (especially when she is vexing me mercilessly), but I know it will pass quickly and I'll be thinking back to this time when she was 7 or 8 and try to recall the silly jokes she tells all the time and the consonant-only writing she fills her homemade, stapled books.

But she will leave me. When she's in the throes of puberty, I may wish she'd leave me sooner than later, I'm sure, but when she actually leaves, I know it will be too soon. No matter when she leaves, it will be too soon. My mother used to say that her goal in parenting was to make herself unnecessary. I remember being a little disconcerted at the idea of launching out on my own, but when the time came, I leapt from the nest gratefully and delightedly and with little trepidation; and I realized that she had done her job well because I wasn't afraid and I had all the skills I needed to take care of myself. I hope that Joey will be as well prepared for life on her own as I was.

So it is my job to become superfluous. To put myself out of a job. To learn how to let go even when I'm aching to hang on tightly. I'm glad I still have a few years of hanging on before I have to let go so my little fledgling can fly out of the nest and she can try out her own wings. It will be a day of triumph for her and for me.

--L