Last week I said goodbye to my daughter Bethan as she flew off to Dubai to start her new life. Little did I realise when she was growing up that it would be so easy for me to let her go. Okay I suppose I really let her go the day she started University. I knew then that things would change and that my little girl was flying the nest.
Me, Beth and her Dad at her graduation.
Now 5 years later she is leaving for another country and I’m happy for her. Me? The clingy, neurotic, worrying Mum she would despair of for phoning countless times on her teenage nights out to check she was okay. The Mum who drove around Tenby trying to find her when she didn’t answer her phone. Me? The mum who took her to hospital not once but twice when she was so drunk she couldn’t talk or walk when other mothers would have put their offspring in a cold shower and laughed it off in the morning.
And now here I am waving her off albeit a little tearfully to Dubai. Of course, there’s Skype. What a wonderful invention. I can talk to her when she’s sitting in her hotel bedroom eating her pot noodle and talk about her day and it’s as if we are in the same room.
Then of course there’s the month I’m planning to spend with her in January. Boy, will she be sick of me then! Though I’m not completely over my neurosis, when she didn’t respond even though Facebook said she was active on landing in Dubai I did think she had been abducted, mugged or worse and spent a fraught hour waiting for a message. (Should never have watched Taken!) But at the end of the day I am a Mum and that comes with the territory.
But all in all I’m happy for her. Proud of her too, obviously. But what a life she will have. London for all its glamour seems like a third world country compared to Dubai. Horrendous journeys on the train and tube to work, we wouldn’t treat animals like that. Now it’s brunch at the Ivy, volley ball on the beach after work in November,and they have Bentley’s for taxis. Now come on…..that takes some beating!
Dubai Marina
Good on you Beth! If I was twenty years younger……….but then at that time I was far too busy being a neurotic mother!
Me and Bethan
allaboutninathomas 
I love diaries, and I enjoy this post, which amounts to a diary entry. Your writing flows smoothly, and you do a great job of conveying your feelings. It’s very heartfelt, and therefore, very interesting.
Advice? The only advice I’d give is never post anything YOU wouldn’t find interesting if another person posted it.
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Thank you so much for your comments. It us much appreciated.
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