Reflections on Identity

A Mother on Vacation Without Her Children

Learning How to Be Independent of My Children

Laura Friedman Williams
Human Parts
Published in
5 min readMar 4, 2024

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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

I watch from my lounge chair as a young girl enters the water, exploding into it. She is not tentative, as I always am, letting my feet acclimate to the cool wet sand, then edging forward so the waves cover just my toes, then ankles, then up to my knees. I wince with every lap of the water, even here in Barbados where the water is a translucent turquoise and just a tad chiller than lukewarm.

But not this girl. She is maybe seven, fine blonde hair tucked into a bubblegum-pink sunhat that is strapped beneath her chin, arms covered in a lavender polka-dotted swimshirt. Her parents have dressed her carefully and I feel an instant pang of guilt for how I have failed my kids in this department — my kids in tiny ruffled bikinis who went hatless, who I halfheartedly chased after with cans of spray-on sunscreen. They were not the pale tow-headed children whose cheeks turn pink instantaneously in the sun, my children — they bronzed, getting darker and coppery. I could be careless with their sun protection, unlike their friends whose sunscreen application had to be done with scientific precision lest I return them to their families aglow, unwarranted pride redolent in my words, “sorry, my kids never burn.”

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Laura Friedman Williams
Laura Friedman Williams

Written by Laura Friedman Williams

Author of AVAILABLE: A Very Honest Account of Life After Divorce (Boro/HarperUK June ‘21; Harper360 May ‘21). Mom of three, diehard New Yorker.

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