Home Alone

My 9 year old is not well. Sore throat, sniffles, flat. He’s the type of kid that will be outside kicking a ball from the moment he gets up until I yell at him to come inside yet yesterday he spent the whole day in his pyjamas in front of the tv.  Even with all that resting, he’s still not 100%, so he’s having another day off school today.

My youngest, however, is fine and so needs to go to school. We walk to school every day. We never drive because it’s only a block away and it’s not worth the drama of getting the kids in the car and finding a park and getting them out of the car etc. So I am faced with the dilemma of what to do with the sick one while I take the well one to school.

“I’ll just stay home, Mum” offers my ever logical first born.

It’s not the first time he’s offered this solution, by the way. He first began his “Home Alone” campaign when he was 7. Declaring that it was ridiculous that he shouldn’t be allowed to stay home on his own for short periods of time. In support of his argument he told me:

1. I won’t answer the door
2. I won’t answer the phone
3. I know how to get myself a drink or something to eat
4. I know how to go to the toilet
5. I won’t go outside
6. If there’s an emergency, I’ll call 000

All of which is incredibly sensible and reasonable and logical – just like him. However, all the logic in the world cannot sway a mother’s protective spirit and so his application was denied.

While I was preparing for my day in the shower this morning, I considered the logistics of walking Stefan to school while Nathan was sick and I thought about his well presented argument from 2 years ago. He has already proven to be responsible enough to walk home on his own from school and I can complete the entire drop-off trip in 15 minutes if I push it. And so it was decided. Nathan would stay home, by himself, for the first time in his life today.

When I was growing up, my single mum worked several jobs at once to make ends meet so my younger brother and I were often home alone. We had our own key to the house and had rules and also had chores. One of mine was to start dinner, every day, so that we could eat at a reasonable time once Mum got home from work. My job was to peel potatoes and cut chips. With a knife. But we survived that. We lived in a housing trust home which had little security, no gates and no real protection from the outside world. We left the front and back door open until we went to bed and most of the time we played on the actual street, where the cars drive, riding our bikes without helmets. We survived that too. It wasn’t the life my mum imagined for us and I am certainly not singing its praises but we were ok fending for ourselves and we weren’t the only ones. It was quite the norm in the 80s and in our neck of the woods.

When I left Nathan home today, I locked the front and back doors [which he could still open from the inside] reminded him of every rule and locked the front gate behind me. I was gone for less than 15 minutes and my heart was racing for the entire time.

When I walked back in the house, he hadn’t moved from his position in front of the tv watching the soccer.

“Hey Mum” he says without looking up, completely unaffected and unaware of how momentous those 15 minutes were.

And now my heart is racing for an entire different reason.

already

So no big deal but my 8 year old walked home from school by himself today.

Except it feels like a big deal. It feels really momentous and I feel equal parts proud and sad. Well maybe not that equal. A little bit proud. A bit more sad.

We have only ever walked to and from school so he knows the one block route well, having walked it twice a day for the best part of 4 years now. He's been campaigning to make the trip unaccompanied for some time but Stefan, my youngest is not ready for that and I'm not ready for Nathan to be responsible for him yet. So we negotiated that on the days that Stefan has a class after school, Nathan could walk home on his own. We talked about starting slow, with me meeting him at the first corner for a couple of times, then extending it to the next corner for a couple of times and then finally to make the trip home. I told him it was best for him to ease into it until he was comfortable. But I know that you know that it was me who needed time to get comfortable.

You see the thing is, I've always been hell-bent on raising independent kids. I believe it is right and I believe it is doing them a disservice to not. So I am proud that we're at this milestone. I am. Really. It's just that the downside to raising independent kids is that with independence comes a diminished need for me. We all know that day will come, but already?? My baby boy used to need me to lay down with him at night before he went to sleep. He used to instinctively reach for my hand wherever we walked. I used to be his world and he would randomly wrap his little arms around my neck and plant big, wet, open-mouth kisses on my cheeks... just because. 

So you can imagine how my heart reacted when just before I was about to leave to meet him at our agreed corner that the door bell rang and there was my baby boy who simultaneously looked so small and so grown up all at once. "Hi Mum" he says BEAMING. "You don't need to meet me at the corner Mum, I can do it all on my own".

And as I internally dropped to my knees and wailed in pain, I beamed back and hugged him SUPER tight and said "I know you can".

Oh FFS, you know what? I'm crying [just a little bit] as I write this so I guess I'm a lot more sad than I thought. As much as I've been gearing up for this exact development, it's hard to let go. So tonight, as I tucked him into bed and he asked me to whisper something in his ear before he went to sleep I whispered "I'm so proud of you Nathan. You're such a big, grown-up boy and you really proved how responsible you can be to me today. But I'm a little bit sad too because you're not my baby anymore."

And he smiled such a proud and pure smile and wrapped his arms around my neck, pulling me close and whispered in my ear "I'll always be your baby Mum".

And my heart exploded.