Slipping Through My Fingers

"Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning 

Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile 

I watch her go with a surge of that well known sadness 

And I have to sit down for a while 

Slipping through my fingers all the time...."

My girls were aged about 1 and 3 when I first heard these lyrics - and I just couldn't stop the tears from flowing!
Hearing the song today, still causes my eyes to sting and I have to fight the urge to 'just have a good cry!'
I challenge any mother of a young girl to watch this clip and not feel emotional...

So it happened around 7 years ago. I'd decided that I deserved a break from 'just being a mum at home.' I needed a bit of 'me' time and  get out of the house, so I'd taken to going to the cheap night at the local cinema by myself while my man babysat the girls, aged about 2 and 6 months. Mamma Mia was one of those films he had absolutely no desire to watch whatsoever, and I love a good old musical.

I was happily chain-eating my over-sized carton of popcorn, thoroughly enjoying myself, when this song came on as Meryl prepares her daughter for her impending hen's night. I stopped, popcorn in hand and the emotion just flooded out of me. What a sight, a grown woman, sitting alone in a dark cinema, tears rolling down her face!

I guess I hadn't thought far ahead enough to contemplate the day that my little girls would be leaving me, showing their first vestiges of independence, no longer totally reliant on me. I certainly wasn't ready for it.

Anyone who has a baby or toddler can't really envisage their child being independent enough to go off to school and certainly not leaving home to start a 'grown-up' life of their own.

Well,  I had another 'emotional moment,' and had to swallow the lump in my throat this weekend. I found myself casting my mind back to 7 years ago and me, crying in the dark cinema.

I'd just sent my daughters, now 7 and 9 into BigW with a $10 to pick out a birthday card for a friend. "Make sure you check the change," I'd called after them. I turned round to pay for the coffee I'd just ordered from the mall coffee cart, glanced back over my shoulder, saw them entering the store, hand in hand, and  hesitated...should I go after them? 

What was I doing letting them go off on their own?

They looked so big and confident.....and yet still so little. Still my babies. Such good girls. Horrific scenes of them getting lost, being spoken to by strangers, falling and cutting open their heads, flittered through my mind...but no! I have to let go sometime - and that time was now.

I waited so anxiously for their return, it felt like forever. But sure enough, they came out of the store all smiles. They'd chosen a lovely card.

"I got the right money back," my eldest informed me, (oh, so grown up,) 

"Mum, can I keep some of the change to buy lollies?" (Boom! and there she is, my little girl again!)

I had to smile to myself.

I learned a lot from this day. They ARE growing up, I do have to let go, they need me to. But, as I keep telling them.... they'll always be my little girls.

And they're not slipping through my fingers, like sand in an hour glass. Their characters are being formed grain by grain, building them into the independent women I want them to be - confident in their individual sandcastles on the solid mother-daughter foundations we've made together.