It was not long after my daughter’s 18th birthday. She’s my eldest. She was writing her university applications, planning her future after leaving home. I was very aware of the fact that she had become an adult, and found myself thinking about all the different relationships we had had over the years. In the very beginning, I carried her insde me – I was everything she knew. Now I was part of the childhood she was leaving behind – and I had – still have – such mixed feelings about it. I’d love to keep her close, but I know she needs to spread her wings, to try new things, new places, new people, new ways of living. It’s my job to encourage her to leave me.
eggshell shattered
fledgeling spreads new feathered wings
nest is empty
This haibun is written forKim’s dVerse prompt. We are asked to reflect on an autobiographical poem and turn our reflection into a haibun. My original poem can be found here: https://fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com/2019/11/12/new-birth/
Sarah writes poems 
I remember the original poem, Sarah, and thinking how familiar it was. My Ellen will be 40 in November, but nothing can wipe out daughter memories. I still love your original lines:
‘the whole house labouring
as my daughter pushes and presses
against the walls, seeking to leave’
You are so right about the different relationships mothers and daughters have, and the haiku is perfect.
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How well I remember those days. Now my baby is a grandmother, and lives 3000 miles across the U.S. She’s still my baby!
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I have no kids but I understand how my mother felt when I left I think… such a normal thing to happen. But I have to imagine how it would have been if I had stayed along.
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It’s a wrench, of course it is. Worse for the last one. Then the nest really is empty. We spend years filling it just to be left with the unwanted feathers.
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So beautiful and heart wrenching Sarah.
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Having had three daughters leave the nest twenty years ago, we are still finding stray feathers in odd places. They are found now by our 9 grandchildren.
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Ah yes, i’m an empty nester daughtet and son grown. Watching from the sidelined a vastly and different view
Much❤love
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The haiku is absolutely a stunning metaphor to the prose you’ve written. As a mother, I understand so well what you’re writing about here. We had a framed saying on our bedroom wall for all the years our children lived at home …. I gifted it to my daughter when she became pregnant with her first. “The best thing parents can give there children is roots and wings.” It is so so hard to let them leave the nest. I find the most interesting thing, now that I’m in my seventh decade, is that I remember their infancy, their childhood…and they do not. They seem to remember me most as I am now….The cycle of life.
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A hard and confusing time in a mother’s life. My nest still has many of their feathers!
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Beautifully put and oh so brave to let them go with such grace.
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And the older I get, the more I know that at eighteen, kids are so young, inexperienced, and vulnerable to be off on their own making their own decisions in a confusing world. I do think university life offers the perfect bridge between home and the wider world. Otherwise, they are plunged out into the thick of it too soon, as my kids were because we were an impoverished family. Sigh. I remember the pangs as one after another of my four left home and how hard it was when the last one did.
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A very nice heartfelt haibun. It is difficult to let them go.
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So beautiful, I could feel the emotion, the wrenching.
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I remember that poem. One interesting thing with the current isolation is that my daughters and I have a group phone call almost every evening–we used to meet once a week to cook dinner, and communicated irregularly in-between. I hope your daughter is, if not home, at least in constant communication. We fill the space with other things, but something is always missing. (K)
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