“What time are you going to the movies?” I yell to my daughter from the living room.

“It starts at 1:45, I’ll pick my friend up at 1:00.”

I suppress my initial reaction upon hearing her plan. It’s the first time she’s gone to the movies without me driving her. She’s had her license since February, but has only recently gotten brave enough to navigate around the city, onto the highway and other places without me.

I want to scream, “No! Don’t you still need me? You couldn’t possibly manage the movies without me!” And, I want to point out, she didn’t even invite me. She’s exercising her impending independence and it’s hovering over me like an anvil.

I know it’s coming, but I don’t have to like it. I like to imagine I’m a forward thinking parent who is easily letting her daughters spread their wings and fly, but I’m not. However, I am holding my tongue about the movies because I know it’s inevitable. If not the movies today, it will happen tomorrow.

At least it’s a Saturday matinee and not dark outside. There’s a whole other list of horrors that go through my mind when I think of my daughter driving around in the dark by herself; not the least of which is zombies.

I’m probably considered overprotective by many standards, not protective enough by others. But my daughters are at a time in their lives when I have to keep my thoughts to myself as long as they aren’t being dangerous to themselves or others.

It’s a time when my reactions to their independence have to be measured before I open my mouth. I have failed in that before – my oldest daughter’s 10th grade year comes to mind. I told her I was no longer going to be responsible for her homework. But at the first sign of trouble and her (what I thought) nonchalant response to it, I came unglued and risked destroying any trust of “you-can-come-to-me-whenever-you-need-to-talk-no-matter-what.”

It doesn’t end after they graduate from high school. My oldest is currently discovering how difficult college really is and “just enough” isn’t good enough anymore. I’m discovering how hard it is not to just camp out in the parking lot at college and hold her hand.

When she calls me distressed about a class, I calmly talk her through a solution, but it takes all my nerve not to just scream at her, “Why aren’t you doing it the way I would do it? It would solve all our problems!” Instead I stay calm and let her come to her own resolution all the while hoping it’s the one I would have chosen. But if it’s not, I just shut up until the next time she comes to me for help.

I have taken to walking a mile and a half every day; while praying. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane after the drama dissipates and the only thing I get for my undying love and support when I ask her how her meeting with her school advisor went is “good.”

I’m not asking a lot, just closure for my pain and suffering. Because as all moms know, for every cough our children have, both literal and figurative, another gray hair appears, another piece of our heart is chinked away.

I’m here for them no matter what their choices; that will never end (ask my mom). I hold on to the moments when everything is going smoothly and all they want to do is drive by themselves to the movies, with a friend, in the daylight.

In the meantime, I walk, I pray.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is still walking and praying. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.