Finding Our Way
By Cara Stolen | April 2024 Newsletter
It’s the first warm, sunny day we’ve had in months. The kids ask to go for a walk, so I put my two-year-old, Reid, in the backpack, lace up my hiking boots, and follow them out the door. It smells like spring—a mix of dirt and rain and wildflowers—and I’m reminded of a different hike that the kids and I took on the first day of spring last year.
That day, two of our four border collies trotted at our heels as we headed out back toward the range ground. We climbed the sagebrush hill behind our house, pausing every so often to exclaim over the first tiny wildflowers and green grass. Reid, eighteen months old at the time, kicked my hip bones like he was riding a horse—spurring me to go faster—and giggled as Royce (almost eight) and Maggie (five) ran and galloped alongside us.
“I’m going to go that way and look for more flowers,” Royce said. “Meet you at the back gate!”
I nodded, and continued hiking up the road. A minute later, I heard Maggie burst into tears.
“I want to look for flowers too, and Royce says I can’t go with him!” She cried.
Glancing around, I hesitated, torn between the desire to give her independence and the fear of letting her out of my sight. Finally, I pointed. “Just take that deer trail over there and come across to the gate when you reach the top.”
I watched her start up, then turned and hiked up the road to wait for her at the gate. I moved slowly, feeling my leg muscles work as I headed steadily up the hill. I marveled at my body’s ability to climb a steep hill with a baby on my back—a testament to pelvic floor PT and postpartum patience. A bird sang in the spring to my right, and I told myself I had made the right decision letting Maggie take her own path. But when I reached the gate, she was nowhere to be seen.
She should be here by now.
My heart rate increased from its steady elevated state to an accelerated panic. Pausing for just a second, I backtracked to where she should have been coming up the hill. Still, no Maggie. By the time I reached the place I’d last seen her, I was picturing the worst.
“Mom! What are you doing!” Royce’s voice carried down to me from the gate above. The wind had picked up, blowing his hair straight up on one side.
My voice caught in my throat. I cupped my hands around my mouth to be heard. “Do you see Maggie?”
He looked side to side before shouting “No!”
A frantic search commenced, the two of us (and two dogs), running across the hillside, screaming “Maggie!” and asking each other if we’d found her. Finally, we hiked back up to the gate together with a plan to split up and search the other side of the hill. But when we reached the gate, there she was, sitting criss-cross-applesauce, practicing her letters in the red-brown dirt.
“There you are!” She said. “I was about to hike back home and see if you were there!”
Tears sprang to my eyes as I knelt down to pull her into a hug. Unfazed, she hopped to her feet to tell us the whole story, of hiking up a little too far, then hearing the creek and turning back to find the fence line and, eventually, the gate.
She’d known where she was the whole time, and knew how to find her way home. She knew, because I’d taught her. If I had just waited for her where I said I would—if I’d trusted and believed in her—the whole experience could have been avoided altogether.
Maggie shouts and brings me back into the present. “Meet you at the top, Mom!”
I watch as she and Royce, now six and eight, sprint to the top of the hill and disappear over the other side. My stomach clenches in that familiar way when they go out of sight, but I resist the urge to rush. When I reach the gate, I don’t see them. I close my eyes and tilt my chin toward the warm sun. I feel the soft breeze on my eyelashes and breathe in the smell of dirt still damp from yesterday’s rain. I think about how odd it is that my relationships with my children are the only relationships in my life whose trajectory is supposed to move toward an eventual separation. Where the goal is for them to need me less and less and less.
Then I hear their whispered giggles.
“Surprise!” They shout in unison, jumping out from behind a sagebrush with fistfuls of wildflowers.
And I am. Surprised.
Surprised by their independence.
Surprised by my letting go.
Surprised by the beauty and joy and spring of it all.
Love,
Cara
For breakfast, an after-school snack, or anything in between, try Sarah’s cinnamon + sweet potato muffins.
Pssst, the C+C Podcast is Back!
We’re back with not one, but two new episodes! We kick off That Doesn’t Bother Me Anymore with a quick State of the Podcast address (don’t miss that part ❤️). Then, in Come To The Table, Ashlee and Katie talk about getting the entire family around the table and why it matters. We’ve got a great season lined up (hello, Sissy Goff!) and are so grateful to be back in your earbuds again.
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A simple pleasure: pretty, satin pajamas.
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 | A guest post by
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cara, your story made me cry. i know that heart-stopping frantic feeling of “losing” your child, and that overwhelming feeling of relief. it can be so hard to let them gain independence, as they inch away from you. thank you for sharing your beautiful storytelling with us!