A proud voice chirped from the backseat of my car. "Finished! I finished the book. My son had just read The Littles to himself. His progression in kindergarten—from stumbling across the bold type in picture books aloud, to impressive reading proficiency—took place at warp speed. For a few weeks, he read aloud; next, he checked words with us. Quickly, though, he dispensed with parental safety nets and picked up whatever he wanted. It is, of course, gratifying to watch one's child dive rather than step into reading. I love the sight of him stretched out on the couch, his nose, literally, stuck in a book. So immersed is he in whatever he's reading that he tunes the rest of the world out. Yet in the car that afternoon, I experienced a pang, seemingly out of nowhere. I was sad, a little lonely. He'd been reading for weeks, sure, but there in the car it struck me that he no longer needed me to venture into unexplored, literary worlds. His newfound reading mastery rendered me less necessary.

As a parent, you anticipate obvious milestones: first step, first day of kindergarten, or first solo spin in the car after obtaining a driver's license. Practically every milestone—the heavy hitter list noted in the fill-in-the-blank memory books or the less obvious—highlights a child's emergent independence. After the kindergarten student began to read thick chapter books, I started to consider more carefully milestones that sneak under the radar. For example, when spring finally returned to New England, the younger brother remounted his bike, training wheels attached, to travel at a dizzyingly fast and furious clip. He had been able to ride the previous autumn, but now he was more solid and speedier, at one with the teetering bicycle. Exhibiting four-year-old panache, he donned the black sneakers with the white star on the heel that make him go extra fast, a bell around his neck, a ponytail and a black NYPD cap that is a few sizes too big. Savvy enough now to brake at each corner, yesterday, I let him zoom ahead of me. How different it is, having spent so much time with your child beside you to watch him speed along in the lead, so free he could have been flying. Yet, he wasn't completely free. He stopped and waited so that we could cross each street together. As I walked behind him, I wasn't completely free either. I continued to monitor his movements. Rather than doing so in proximity, I watched from a distance. That new space between us marked a change for me, as well. I was returned, a smidgen more, to myself, my own thoughts. Together, as parent and child, we function a little like those dog leashes fashioned after fishing reels. The thread connecting us seems nearly invisible at times; you glimpse it when the sun hits in a certain way or when he rushes to me to kiss a hurt finger better. While I let the tether lengthen, I haven't definitively cut any cords. So far, we are practicing. The non-banner milestones remind us of how much work goes into letting go. There is nothing linear about it, nothing straightforward, and yet, the trajectory is unmistakable.

Very often, these minor milestones are subtle, even impermanent. I coveted the first self-portrait the four-year old carted home from school. There he was: circle head connected by a vertical line of a neck to the upper body—a horizontal line atop a semicircle—sitting upon the rest of his oblong body, his arms and legs lines, his hands and feet almost circles. Alongside his two dot eyes, one dot nose and u-shaped mouth ran two more vertical lines for his long hair. Surely this marked a new phase of artwork—realism—the step beyond his tornado period. But mixing colors and experimenting with the variable properties of thin and thick lines quickly overtook portraiture. And while we all eagerly anticipated the first sleepover for the seven-year-old, his friend grew weepy by ten. A determined and athletic boy, the friend's small eyes were pooled with tears slick as onyx beads. He lay on a sleeping mat equal parts grit and homesickness. I sat down on the mat to rub his back and offered to take him home. He looked relieved, although both kids wanted to power through till morning so that their sleepover would count as real, as successful. Amongst the bedclothes between the sweetly pajama-clad kids, I explained that to last together two hours past bedtime was a feat worthy of celebration. The friend could come over the next day for breakfast and they could continue playing; in essence, we would achieve practically an entire sleepover. By eleven, both boys—in their own beds—were fast asleep. A few months later, when the friend's eighth birthday rolled around and he had a slumber party, my son's first successful overnight seemed almost anticlimactic.

Such moments—the unsolicited apology from the intractable preschooler or the weeklong trip the seven-year-old took with just his papa—place the bigger-ticket firsts into perspective. These less famously touted markers confirm that it takes much more than a first step to take a first step. Before an actual stride comes rolling over, then getting from tummy to sitting, followed by creeping and then crawling, standing, cruising and at last that long-anticipated inaugural step. Case in point: our voracious and precocious reader actively avoided reading as long as he could, because he was afraid that we would stop reading to him. Reading eventually found him, though. First, words on cereal boxes and signs announced themselves. Chapter titles were next, then simple storybooks. Eventually, he had to read because access to all of those stories became too compelling to resist. Still, our reader hasn't shunned us. His preference that an adult read to him every night endures. Currently, my husband is reading Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth to him and I'm reading Louise Fitzhugh's Sport, books he is easily capable of reading to himself. And he still likes to snuggle beside his brother to listen in on his three nightly picture books. This flickering crystallization of moments in a video freeze frame manner rather than through formal portraiture allows more opportunities to appreciate the industry growing up demands.

Maybe that's also why the unexpected departures are the ones that can stop your heart momentarily. Barreling along the country road after my son snapped his book shut that afternoon a year ago, I realized that with every book he reads that I haven't read, he would be experiencing things we cannot share. Never mind that he's in school, where much occurs I am clueless about everyday; never mind that he keeps secrets with friends. Mine wasn't a rational response. His independent reading acts as a reaffirmation that childhood is solidly his now. In one distinct moment, I realized—not for the first time—how I would not always know what he was reading or talking about or thinking. As much as I know him more intimately than anyone else in the world does now, I do not know him exactly the way I once did, and I will not know him the way I do now forever. Bittersweet, more sweet sure, but not entirely, this process of letting them go is. Milestones keep me on task, reminding me that to let go gracefully is the critical endeavor of parenting well.

yellow lamp on blue book

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