TheBanyanTree: Our kid is growing up

[S Larwood]

Just reading Janice's words about her son no longer beng a little kid in
white socks brought to mind my thoughts this week about our youngest
daughter Christa.

We have three girls and they all took their time leaving home.  Pippa is now
married but has lived in her own home for some seven years, Alison didn't
move out of home till she was 28, has moved back home recently for monetary
reasons and will no doubt go again as soon as she can.

But Christa hasn't only moved from home, she has moved across the world to
London, UK.  Our 26 year-old is now the sophistacated Londoner.  An editor
and writer for a magazine, who travels the world with that job and it came
to me this week that even if she ever moves back to Melbourne, she will
never be the funny, clever, sometimes moody daughter we've always known.  Of
course all those attributes will still be there, but they have been honed
and changed out of our view.

This is scary to a mother.  We think we will allways know our daughters, and
 on a basic level of course, we will, but I find that I am not only
desparately missing Christa, but I am mourning the loss of the girl we knew.

She has been in London for a year, but in a way it is a lifetime.  Alone,
she has coped with an English winter, finding somewhere to live and then
finding somewhere else when that didn't work out.  She's impressed her
bosses and those above them with her work and her attitude so that that they
are offering her promotions and sponsorship so that she can continue to work
for them after her working visa runs out.  She is doing all this without
asking our advice, without me proof reading what she is submitting or even
discussing her options in life. 

We will always love her, and she us, but she is now a fully grown up woman
with a life independent of us, and she has done that growing up without our
looking on.  We no longer know her in the way we do our other daughters. 
She will never live at home again after this independence so we will have to
get to know this new woman in a different way when she at last comes home.

Whatever, I cant wait.  I really thought I would miss her less as time went
on but actually it gets worse as time goes on.

Sal