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Learning to love and let go

I sometimes rue my decision to give my kids freedom to roam.

Most afternoons over the last number of years, I have tried to make sure I can be available for my boys after school, to make them popcorn and ask about their day. But increasingly, I encourage them not to be here with me at all, but rather to join things, hang out with friends, explore on their own. More and more I schedule things myself so that our old patterns aren’t in effect, much as I have loved them.

So it was that when the “I’m going to Shake Shack” text came in from my 12-year-old, I wrote back, “K, I’m at the hair salon” and was quite pleased. I love the idea that my middle-schooler can wander around with friends after school. It is a big reason I decided to raise my kids in New York City versus another kind of place, such as Arizona, where I grew up relying on cars.

The text came in at 2:37 pm, and I didn’t worry when I got home at around 3:30 and he still wasn’t home. My older son came in and had some friends come over, and I didn’t think much about my other son, the missing one, till a bit past 4:30, when it began to get dark. I put in a call and got no answer. At 4:47 I texted: “Hey there, where are you?” Nothing. The message showed it had been delivered but not read. I waited a few minutes to hear back, and then, well, I began to panic.

Where was he? This had happened once before, and strangely enough I had just been talking about it at the hair salon because he was supposed to have met me there that day for a haircut and he just hadn’t shown, and he hadn’t answered his phone for hours. He turned up at the house where my older son had been headed before I stopped him and made him fret and worry with me. He’d gone with his brothers’ friends, and his phone had died.

“Don’t lose Oscar again,” was the parting line from the stylist.

Excellent. Aces. Now it was coming up on 5 pm, pitch dark, and I was wondering to myself why I hadn’t made any sort of plan with my child, like when he should call or be home. I wanted to be so blasé, so cool and chill, to let them navigate their own ship. Why exactly?

I was supposed to go out to meet friends in the city, and so was my husband, straight from work. Now, instead, it was possible we could be spending the evening wringing our hands over our missing son.

My husband agreed to look up on “Find my iPhone” where he was, and quickly surmised he was around Columbia Street, where we knew he had a friend. But still. Many calls went unanswered. I texted “Please call me,” but resisted additional texts. There was concern and yet, still, I didn’t want to seem like a psycho stalker given the very distinct reality that he was fine, playing basketball, and just didn’t hear his phone.

5:05, 5:10, 5:15. My husband tried to call friends who he thought might be able to find the number of the friend where he seemed to be, but to no avail. It was 5:20 and both our long-ago made plans for the evening were looking unlikely. How could we go out not knowing where our son was?

At 5:17, my phone rang and I knew it was him.

I should have been angry. My husband’s idea was that he be punished for not checking in, and while I had agreed, I was just grateful that he was on the other end of the line with his cute voice, and I couldn’t be mad. He was apologetic for worrying me, had left his phone in his bag before going to the park to play basketball. No harm, no foul. I should have asked him to touch base at some specific point, and to let me know his whereabouts, which I told him. But then, I wondered: Did I need the exact blow-by-blow? Why did I fly into a panic not being in constant touch? Wasn’t freedom the intention, and didn’t that include not having to report to your mom where you were every minute?

This pre-teen, teenage stuff was complicated, and I realized that, ideally, for my comfort, my boys would be locked in my house at all times. But — and this was a serious but — I had to get used to not being in charge of where they were. I had to learn not to imagine the worst right away, and I had to trust that my boys were smart and could figure things out themselves, for all of our sakes.

“Just call before it gets dark next time,” I suggested gently, and was happy to hear agreement from the other end of the line. “I love you,” I said, and I sure did.

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