As my children have gotten older, the physical distance between us has grown as they have grown and matured. Children start off in your arms, then to play on the floor at your feet, then across the room on shaky legs, then running across the yard, soon down the street on their bike, away for the weekend at a friend’s house, across city on the train for a part-time job, absent for some weeks in another state at camp or on mission, living away for a season at college…and then finally gone off on their own to live the lives we’ve helped them launch upon.

I’ve always heard references to a mother’s heartstrings which supposedly tie our hearts to the hearts of our children. The way I have begun to feel about this is perhaps less poetic. I don’t think it’s a heartstring, but rather a heartelastic. Imagine those really stiff elastics (or rubber bands) that don’t have much give and are hard to stretch out.  We start off like that as new parents.

That doubled piece of rubber can only stretch so far and it doesn’t have much give in it. It’s almost painful to stretch them then, isn’t it? And we are always prepared for it to zing back and cause pain. We’re focused like that on our babies, wanting them right up next to us. We have trouble not calling to check on them when we leave them the first time with grandma. It’s painful to leave them long, and we always shoot right back to that close proximity because it feels right.

As time passes, that elastic slowly stretches and allows a greater distance between us and our children…down the street, across town, away for a period of time. It keeps giving and giving…giving freedom and space and trust and finally that distance. Our children are still attached, but the distance grows in how far from us they go and how long they are gone.

And finally, the elastic seems to break…they are far removed…college perhaps. Really, what’s happened is that the elastic is now a single strand rather than double…and it’s just longer.  We can still hold one end and our children the other. There is a greater flexibility and give to the elastic then. It doesn’t have to be stretched to reach from heart to heart, it simply is there providing a gentle tug of assurance that the other end is firmly attached. 

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