May 19, 2016 4 min read

The avocados were finally ripe.

They’re always hard as rocks when we bring them home; they wait there on the counter, getting a squeeze every day until their lizard skin finally surrenders a bit and they are proclaimed ready.

Grace had been waiting – waiting for the avocados to ripen so they could join the shallots and tomatoes and lime juice to make a bowl of guacamole. I texted her during study hall at school.

Guac tonight.

By 7, the lumpy bowl of green and red was ready. We ripped open the bag of chips and scooped away. She ate about five chips full, not that I was counting, but this child has a turn-off switch like I’ve never seen, and then she was on her way.

Grace passed her driving test this week, a triumph that followed a failed attempt the instructor hung solely on her not signaling before backing into the parallel parking space.

When she sailed into the house after passing the test, she looked relaxed, and older.

When a child gets her driver’s license, you feel a part of yourself fade away. You feel it when they first crawl away from where you are, when they walk into kindergarten for the first time, when they say they’d rather hang out with friends than at home with you. As a mother, you know this is part of the deal, and their growing and ripening will come with the sting of moments when you are left on shore to watch them sail off on their own chunk of iceberg.

But until that moment she became a licensed driver, Grace was still tethered to me. Each morning, I would drive her to school, often in sleepy silence but sometimes for a wide-awake, five-mile chat about some teacher or other. “Have a good day,” I’d say as she got out, knowing she’d be back home again in seven hours, needing a bus to bring her.

Now, with a license and a car of her own, she won’t need me as much to manage her burgeoning life. Although I didn’t often refuse to drive her where she wanted to go, I always had a feeling of control, that I could say no, stay here and hang out.

As with most things around parenting a teenager, that sense of control is a lie. They are ours for a short time. Then they become their own, and you’re left to wonder how you got to this day when motherhood felt so ephemeral, so wispy and slippery.

I console myself by saying she still has years of high school and still needs a place to sleep, food to eat, car insurance to be paid, college to be financed. Parental guidance to be offered. The driver’s license frees her only so much, but of all the freedoms I’ve suffered as my children have grown, this one hurts the most.

She and I used to argue a lot and now we don’t so much; she grows prettier all the time; she likes to hide around corners and jump out to scare me. My heart leaps every single time she walks through the door at the end of the day. And now she will come and go without my help.

When she’d had her fill of guacamole last night, she said she was expected at a friend’s house. She grabbed her car keys from the table and bent down to let me kiss her. She sailed out the door, taking another piece of me with her.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.