It had been an extremely cold, wet, and windy winter, and my two-year-old daughter and I had been stuck inside for at least a week. The highlight of our day was bundling up and trekking out to the mailbox. Our mailbox is about 150 feet from the house, so it is a bit of a hike.
It involved putting on the snowsuit, boots, and mittens that toddlers wear, you know the kind in which it is impossible for them to bend, and in which, they immediately announce that they need to use the bathroom right after you button the last button, zip up the last zipper, and pull on the last boot.
We live on a busy road, so it was my habit to plop my two-year-old on the top of a hill, adjacent to the mailbox but a safe distance from the road, and then walk the last ten paces to the box. My toddler stood with arms outstretched in her rigid snowsuit while I pulled out the mail. Suddenly, a huge gust of wind caught her and pushed her backward. She shrieked, “Mommy, I’m blowing away!”
I tried to run up the hill to grab her, but this was a particularly fickle wind gust, and while it was pushing her up, it was pushing me down. I struggled against it, crying in frustration, yet laughing at the absurdity of the entire situation. My baby was ten feet from me and yet I couldn’t reach her, the hand of an invisible wind keeping us apart.
As the years passed, I often reflected on this moment. I had bundled her up, placed her in a safe place, and done all a mother could do to protect her child, and yet the cold cruel world was carrying her away from me. As she grew, I continued to try to protect her, but as I did, I realized that I also had to let the wind take her away.
First, it was kindergarten. How I cried after I put her on the bus that very first day! Twelve years of firsts followed. The first friend gained and lost, the first triumph and failure, the hard-won and lost battles of childhood. Every time, I tried to help but was often pushed away as she began her own struggle against the winds of the world.
And my daughter caught the wind too. She finished high school and college and then joined the Peace Corps traveling farther than I could have ever imagined when I first rocked her in her cradle. Her global travels were vast, and her spiritual wanderings matched them. She learned about the joys, troubles, and philosophies of the world. And when the wind set her down, she grew.
On that long ago windy day, the gust gave way and I grabbed onto my little girl. We laughed together as the tears streamed down our faces and I carried her back to safety. I told her that the wind would never get her, that Mommy would always save her, and that she could never blow away.
But I was wrong. The winds of the world do blow our children away. If we are lucky, the wind blows them close now and again so that we can laugh and cry together. We can’t always protect them, but we can give them the love they need to spread their arms and embrace whatever life brings their way. And we can hope that there is always someone there to catch them in love when the wind lets them go.
