I can’t help but wait up. Even when the day has been long. Even when my eyes are heavy. Even when half the house has been asleep for hours. Still, I wait. For headlights to brighten the darkened driveway. For footsteps on the pavement, faint at first, heavier when their feet meet the porch. I wait for the door to fly open, bags and books and adventures spilling out onto the floor. But mostly, I wait to hear their stories.
It’s habit, I think. Not necessarily the waiting up, but the familiarity of one another being the last thing each of us sees before sleep takes over and dreams take off. A rhythm shaped and strengthened by decades of bedtime routines, of tucking in and final prayers and “one more story, pleeease.”
Like every mother reading this, I’ve always slept better knowing that all of my kids are safe and sound. When I can go room by room and count heads, listen for shallow breaths, sneak in kisses on cool cheeks as silently as I can. For all the worry that seeps into the cracks of daily life, I’ve wondered how much is squelched by evidence of rising chests and peace-filled sleep. Of reaching out and finding them there.
And it used to be the other way around. When I think about their younger years, my arms feel heavy. So much of mothering was finding my kids reaching out for me. It was holding them in my arms as babies, then on my hip as toddlers. Then it was their hands I held on busy streets and nervous first days. Promising to not let go until they’ve said they’re OK. And when they didn’t need me to hold on, I still held close to everything else: their imaginations and dreams, their worries and insecurities. Their highs. Their lows.
If you’ve taken care of others, you know every bit of this. There is no half-in when it comes to those we love. There’s only all-in all the time. With kids, it’s princess parties with sparkling tiaras and Nerf wars with roaring aftermath. It’s flour-caked counters, and “Yes, we can double the chocolate chips.” It’s make-believe with pixie dust to their hearts’ content. An in-over-your-head embrace of everything.
Their teenage years pull you out of playing pretend, but this is when I learned to listen more than talk. And the more I watched, the clearer it became that these growing-up years are when you witness them becoming the real stuff of magic. They find their passions, declare their beliefs, and start to make their places in the world. There were still a million reasons to stay close. I just had to learn to change my posture as every season of their lives seemed to require a new playbook. I never felt like I had the right answers right away, but simply staying put seemed to work. If I could be there for them, be here, we’d both find our way.
Being in close proximity to my kids is the only way I’ve known to parent. My confidence as a mom is deeply intertwined with physical presence. I know how to read their faces. I know what foods heal wounds. I know how to stay up late. To be here when they need me. I’ve had to refine how to show up for each of them, all being so different, but almost 20 years in, I started to feel like I finally had the hang of it…
Until a couple of years ago, when my oldest headed off to college. Now this fall, I’ll say goodbye to my second, Ella, whose heart was captured by a university even farther away than the one where my oldest, Drake, has settled. And just like last year, and the year before, it’s late summer and I’m already wondering how to hold this—them—well from afar. What does embrace look like when, to me, it feels like my kids are a world away?
“… the hope, I think, is that my children will know—no matter how far or near they are—that proximity isn’t what truly connects us.”
Again, I’ve found myself without the right answers. Only a comfort that all playbooks start as blank pages and the revelation that maybe my pixie dust wasn’t proximity after all, but instinct, and a love so relentless that it simply never gives up.
If you’ve walked this path and you hold the secrets to success—please—I’m all ears. The best advice I’m offering myself this season is to be there for them the same way I always have: surely and steadily.
For Drake and Ella, it might look like experimenting: care packages with their favorite cookies and surprise visits for an afternoon coffee. But it will also look the same way it always has: a listening ear, texts that let them know I’m here. Because the hope, I think, is that my children will know—no matter how far or near they are—that proximity isn’t what truly connects us. Maybe it never was. All along, there was something richer, deeper, more lasting and meaningful that tethered us. The truth is we belong to one another, and there’s no amount of distance that can undo that.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to wait up—for the three still at home and the two off on their grand adventures. I’ll wait for late-night stories and calls between classes. For hugs before bed and the goodness of embraces made sweeter by stretches of absence. I’ll do what I’ve always done, all any of us can do: I’ll embrace every age. Every season. Every new way of being there for them. I’ll hold every moment close till my arms give out.
This story has been adapted from the fall 2025 issue of Magnolia Journal. To see it in print, pick up your copy here or on a newsstand near you. Then, start a subscription for inspiration year-round.
