The downside to independence.

G.K. Chesterton wrote "The principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evoluationary principle that all growth  is a branching out.  A woman loses a child even in having a child.  All creation is separation.  Birth is as solemn a parting as death." 

I've been reflecting on this passage from Orthodoxy for the strangest reason.  Boogaloo no longers needs me to wash her sheets every morning.  She has now slept drily through the night twice.  I no longer need to get up in the middle of the night, pull her out of her puddle, pat her down, dry her off, strip her bed, and settle her back on clean sheets.  From here on out (with a few exceptions, I'm sure), my baby will only need me for nightmares and vomit episodes, at least between bedtime and breakfast.

For most people this would be a point of celebration. Hooray! She's dry through the night. Maybe poop in the potty come next. I actually felt kind of displaced.  At first, I really didn't like it. Ditto for her growing potty independence during the day. She doesn't need me anymore. I feel as if I've been sloughed off. My maternal programming dictates that I do something that isn't necessary any more.  I have this urge to go where there's nothing to do. 

I guess that's the process of raising a child.  I wasn't bothered by her attitude of independence (she is, after all, three) because it was so obviously undeserved.  Now she's starting to deserve it.  She can button her own buttons and zip her own zippers.  She hangs up her own coat and chooses her own shoes.  She thinks she can get her own snacks, but I still intervene there.  Most of the time I appreciate that when she does what she can do, I am freed to do the other things I need to do, but sometimes, it just goes against the grain.

Chesterton continues his profound thought thus:  "It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the newborn child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world.
    "According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it.  According to Christianity, in making it, he set it free." 

I wonder if God feels this kind of pain when he watches us grow up.  But then God doesn't have to be worried about being needed.  He's the upholder of the universe.  And he wants to see us grow up.  He can go with us through everything we grow into.  I'm just starting to realize that my little girl is going to have separate activities, separate pursuits, a separate life.  Sakes alive.  What am I going to do when school starts?