Letting Go

“Sometimes when I pick Matthew up he wraps his arms around me so tightly, like he is worried that I will let go of him before he is ready for me to,” Julie tells me one day when I drop Matthew off for daycare. She watches him in her home anywhere from twenty to twenty-five hours a week. Matthew is very much at home there, whether it is squabbling with the other kids over toys, chasing their part Akita part Snuffleupagus around the yard, or rooting through their kitchen cabinets.


We chose Julie not because her house was in a quiet neighborhood, or even that she provided packets of information for us to take home. It was because during the interview, when Matthew was crawling around her living room she put her hand on corner edge of the coffee table to prevent him from bumping his head. It was something that she had probably not thought about while she was doing it, which was the type of person I wanted watching Matthew while I was at work, a mom with some experience.

 After leaving her home after our interview we went out for dinner and as we were leaving the restaurant we happened to see Julie and her family arriving, evidently a good sign!

“Bye Mama!” Matthew says waving at after me as I walk to my car, “Bye Mama! Bye!” His goodbyes are cheerful and frantic at the same time.

Oh that little Matthew! With his fork in one hand and ravioli in the other during meals, who walks around the house with a Grover stethoscope around his neck and carrying an empty medicine spoon. How quickly the time will pass and one day he won’t remember that there was ever a time he preferred blueberries to chocolate. Will he remember Julie or will she get lost along with the memories of afternoons spent playing with Legos and Play Doh? Already the thought of him as a teenager engulfs me with sense of longing for his babyhood. The reason for this is a simple one, I am afraid he will let go of me before I am ready for him to.