Letting Go of Living Vicariously
By Melanie Dale
@melanierdale
“Go on in. Mommy will be right here watching you.” I smiled reassuringly as my kid entered the gym for tumbling, the studio for dancing, the aquatic center for swimming, the field for soccer, the media center for poetry recitation, the track for running, classroom for Science Olympiad, the fill-in-the-blank-location for fill-in-the-blank activity.
I used to take classes myself and try new things and enjoy new experiences and then one day I blinked and I was driving my kids to classes and cheering them on as they tried new things and standing by as they enjoyed new experiences. I became Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window watching them live their lives. At some point as I grinned at my kids, I turned to a fellow voyeur-parent and murmured, “I’m living vicariously through them.”
Recently I blinked again and my kids were grown and didn’t need me to watch them, drive them, or cajole them and I faced a hollowness in my life left by the memory of all their childhood pursuits. For a couple of decades I lived vicariously through their activities and as I let go, I didn’t know how to fill the newfound time in my schedule.
What did I want to do? Turns out I want to do the things I’ve watched them do.
For years and years I drove my daughter to dance, theatre, and choir rehearsals. We’d crank up the show tunes in the car and sing together Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Moana, or worship songs from church. That stage of her life has passed and my car feels so quiet now. I missed singing with my daughter in the car.
One Sunday morning at my new church they said goodbye to a couple who’d been there forever and were moving away. When the priest mentioned that Patty had been an alto I perked up and stole a glance back at the empty seat in the choir. This felt like a nudge. I missed singing with my daughter, and the choir had a hole in the alto section. That Wednesday I showed up for rehearsal, apologized in advance for being rusty, and plowed through the songs.
They were so kind and welcoming. Suddenly I have a whole group of fun people who love singing and I look forward to Wednesday night rehearsals and Sunday mornings. I haven’t been in a choir since high school and I’m slowly remembering how to read music and find the alto line and breath support. I’m not living vicariously through my daughter’s rehearsals anymore. I’m attending my own.
My son has been a swimmer since he was six years old. For well over a decade I drove him back and forth across our town for practices and back and forth across our state for meets. I loved it. I loved watching him swim and smelling the pool and the sound of splashing. A couple years ago he realized he doesn’t want to swim in college. He stayed dedicated to his year-round and high school teams, but I knew the day would come when this chapter in his life would end.
I’m excited for his next adventures but I miss the smell of chlorine in my car. I miss the sound of splashing. But my kids don’t live for me. They live for themselves. And it’s about time I remember how to live for myself, too.
I joined a gym with a pool, borrowed my son’s old Halloween swim cap with cartoon ghosts on the sides, and started doing laps several times a week. I bought a swimsuit that’s more like a swim onesie. It covers everything. Like, everything. The suit comes down to my knees and has a built-in shelf bra. It has racing stripes but I don’t think they have the effect the designer was going for. It lives in my gym bag and I stretch it over my curves like a sausage casing.
When I slide into the water, I feel weightless. The water cools my hot flashes and my mind calms as I breathe and count laps. I gave up flip turns because my brain no longer likes to be swirled in a somersault every twenty-five yards. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters in the pool, and through the breathing and counting I find peace.
If I want to smell chlorine and hear splashing, I have to find it myself. If I want to keep swimming in my life, then I have to be the swimmer. My son’s time in the pool is wrapping up. I’m cheering him on during his last season, soaking up all the senior things and all the lasts. And when it’s over, I’ll still have a pool and a lane and the feel of my arms cutting the water.
I’ve helped my kids study for tests, cramming their heads with knowledge as my head grew squishier with age. As they learned to study for themselves, graduate, move away, I missed learning. A few years ago I earned my registered yoga teacher 200-hour (RYT-200) certification, and I realized that I really enjoyed going deeper into this practice that had been a part of my life for twenty-some years. So recently I’ve gone back for my RYT-300 and am cramming more sequencing and Sanskrit in my head. My kids don’t need me to help them study anymore, so I’ll take my own self to school and keep learning, keep growing, because even though I’m almost done raising kids, I still have a lot of living to do.
I’m done living vicariously through my kids. I’ve loved it. It’s been the honor of a lifetime to stand on sidelines and sit in audiences and click stopwatches and drop off in bus loops. Their lives are just getting started. And I still have rehearsals to attend and laps to swim. I still have things to learn and places to go. My time raising kids is drawing to a close, but I’m not done. I’m just getting started.
Melanie Dale is the author of four books, Women Are Scary, It’s Not Fair, Infreakinfertility, and Calm the H*ck Down. She’s a writer for the TV series Creepshow, a monthly contributor for Coffee + Crumbs, and her essays are published in The Magic of Motherhood. She has appeared on Good Morning America and has been featured in articles in Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, The Bump, Working Mother, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Los Angeles Times. To get out of the office, she spent the last few years shambling about as various zombies on The Walking Dead. She and her husband live in the Atlanta area with three kids from three different continents and an anxious Maltipoo named Khaleesi.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.