Can't slow children's transition to adults

My children were both incredibly wanted. Most days they still are. Why did no one warn me how full of transitions parenting would be?

Again and again, children leave us in one way or another and then return. Many of these rites of passage leave us puzzled. Some of them leave us breathless.

The changes begin in infancy when they begin to crawl and then toddle away. In a flash, it's the first day of kindergarten. Then comes the jarring, protracted transformation of puberty. Just as we get our bearings, high school graduation is upon us and we see them off to college or jobs. At some point in the years that intervene, we watch them coalesce into the first, solid version of themselves: Young Adult 1.0.

As a parent who is divorced, these comings and goings began early. Instead of feeling comfortable with change, I feel no more prepared than most.

Inside, I often railed and then rallied when my children left for time with their father. It was far too soon for them to have a second home and a second set of friends, a whole other existence away from me to which I could only be a spellbound voyeur.

When those visits went well, my children came back with a more defined sense of self. Weekends away that went less well left noticeable change of a different sort.

Upgrades. Transitions. Some of them leave us on our knees, either in gratitude that parent and changeling survived the metamorphosis or in supplication for strength to make it through the next seismic shift. Then, whether the child is 2 or 22, parent and child struggle to find balance.

Where's the line between supportive and stifling? How do we navigate the tricky boundary of caring versus confining? We want so much for them to be OK. Economically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Meanwhile, we are often wading through transitions of our own. Strangers are starting to refer to us as "ma'am" and "sir."

Besides moving from parent of young children to parent of young adults, we also renegotiate relationships with our own parents, often switching roles. Or perhaps we get reacquainted with our mates and ourselves.

Maybe now's the time we take another look at that dream career or make peace with the one in which we find ourselves. The same can be said of our changing bodies. Mine certainly seems to transition independent of my wishes. Our children, our parents, ourselves. I'm told this is all normal and predictable. It doesn't feel like it. Where's the "save" button?

Since the young are often so facile with and enamored of technology, I guess it is inevitable that parents and our offspring are often the subjects of computer metaphors. I just hope that when all the upgrades are done, we still find some vestige of the operating system we installed.

How does the proverb go? "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." How long till I know for sure?

It can be overwhelming and more than a little scary. There are days when I feel wholly unprepared to parent young adults. I am regularly humbled by the task.

Whatever occasions these changes, at some point, when the smoke clears, sons and daughters present parents with their newly forged selves. They are certainly changed inside, but outside as well. My daughter can look me in the eye, and my son is now taller than I by more than half a foot.

Still, on the occasions when my children allow it, I gingerly gather these fragile adultlike beings into my fretful, outstretched arms.

It is not lost on me that I am trembling with joy, uncertainty and awe just as I did when they were placed into my arms as newborns.