At 65, I thought my active parenting days were over. Then came a trip to Thailand with my daughter

Here’s what nobody tells you about parenting adult children: you spend decades learning to let go, pride yourself on how well you’ve done it, and then just as you feel settled into a new phase, life throws you back into the trenches of hands-on mothering. And sometimes, it turns out to be the greatest gift you never knew you needed.

Aged 65, I’d become pretty good at being the mother of a 30-year-old. I’d mastered the art of not calling too often, of swallowing my advice unless asked, of pretending I wasn’t stalking her on social media. I was busy anyway – running a company, serving on boards and globe-trotting to music festivals like some ageing groupie. Life was full. Then came Thailand.

At 65, I got to return to active parenting when caring for my adult daughter. Credit: iStock

My brilliant, independent lawyer daughter needed gender reassignment surgery, a procedure that no Australian surgeon was equipped to handle due to the complexity of her case. Because that’s what happens when you raise an overachiever: they develop equally overachieving medical conditions. She found a surgeon in Thailand, made the arrangements, and informed me with the casual air of someone announcing they’re popping out for coffee.

“Mum, you really don’t need to come,” she said, in that tone adult children use when they’re trying to be kind while secretly wondering if you’ve lost your marbles. “I’m 30, remember? I’ve got this.”

But mothers never really stop being mothers – we just get better at disguising our hovering as casual interest. So, without a formal invitation, I flew to Thailand alongside her, armed with nothing but blind faith and a mother’s obstinate love.

The surgery went well, though watching your child being wheeled into theatre never gets easier, no matter how old they are. In those first few days of recovery, as she lay there in her hospital bed, I remembered what it was like when she was small – the fierce protectiveness, the constant vigilance, the way time seems to stop when your child needs you.

Then came the food crisis. The hospital, despite their assurances that they would be able to cater to her coeliac disease, turned out to be about as gluten-aware as a bread factory. Suddenly, there I was, in a tiny Thai apartment with a kitchen the size of a postage stamp, channelling my inner Julia Child.

Every day I’d venture to the local market, armed with Google Translate and determination to find ingredients that wouldn’t make her violently ill. I’d point at items to bewildered vendors until I finally had enough ingredients to return home and somehow cobble together a meal.

In those moments of feeding her over the following month, of watching her slowly heal, of listening to her dreams and fears in the quiet of her hospital room, I remembered that love isn’t just an emotion – it’s an action. It’s showing up with homemade tom yum soup and learning to make pad Thai without soy sauce. Some of the actions are different from those the first time around, but some are the same – sitting there, combing her hair, just like I did 25 years ago.

When we returned home four weeks later, my friends jokingly called me the Kitchen Goddess, praising what they saw to be my sacrifice. I smiled and nodded, and accepted the compliments. But in truth, I hadn’t sacrificed a thing. My daughter had gifted me 30 uninterrupted days of her time. In what universe is that not winning the lottery?

They say you can’t step in the same river twice, but nobody tells you that sometimes the river wends back around and offers you a second chance to wade in its waters. For one precious month, I got to be what I’ll always be at heart: her mother.

When my daughter cried and told me she couldn’t have done it without me, I wanted to tell her that she had it backwards. We were both getting second chances – hers to finally live as her true self, mine to mother her in a new way. This wasn’t about what she needed – it was about what we had both needed: a reminder that love doesn’t diminish with age, it just finds new ways to express itself. Sometimes through Thai curry made in a baby frying pan.

Lesley Podesta is the CEO of Kilfinan Australia, chair of the External Advisory Board, Young and Resilient Research Centre, Western Sydney University, and a board member of UNICEF Australia.

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