Angela Mollard: The secret parenting challenge nobody warns you about

It’s not that she doesn’t want her daughter to go on the extended world trip. She raised her to be brave. Angela Mollard just never expected the bravery required would be hers own.

Liam Neeson in Taken, and (inset) Angela Mollard and her daughter Lilibelle. Pictures: Supplied/News Corp

Apparently, I was the chilled one.

While her dad was concerned about her staying in a youth hostel on her own and had advised printing out all our phone numbers in case her phone was stolen, my contribution to her travel plans had been minimal. “Maybe avoid Barcelona honey. They’re getting angry having so many tourists.”

Then a plane fell out of the sky.

And Israel started bombing Iran.

And Qantas revealed that one of its pilots had passed out seconds after landing.

A parent’s lot is spending two decades keeping them alive ... the trusting the world to do the rest, says Angela Mollard. Picture: Supplied

“What seat are you in,” I asked my 21-year-old daughter last Saturday.

She hadn’t booked one. Cost too much. “Was 11A already gone?”

Of course, it was.

By Sunday, I was calculating the distance between Doha – her stop-off on the way to Greece – and Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility.

How close would she be if the US decided to bomb?

A bare 1270km, not much further than Sydney to Brisbane.

Angela Mollard and her daughter Lilibelle ahead of Lilibelle’s ig trrip. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Of course, my daughter was all over it, showing me an app that displayed in real time how all international flights avoided flying over Iranian air space the minute Israel launched their attack.

I pored over it. One airliner seemed to react slower than the others. Oh dear God, don’t that let be hers.

I’m not an anxious parent and I couldn’t have been a news reporter if I’d been flappable but on Monday night as Lilibelle jetted towards the Middle East I was twitchy.

Flight QR8400 has likely never had such a diligent tracker of its progress. Its precious cargo arrived unperturbed.

Well, sort of. “Baby screamed the whole way and security guard at Doha told me off for sleeping on the airport floor,” she messaged.

It’s not that I don’t want my daughter to go on this extended trip she’s worked three jobs to afford.

I raised her to be brave. I just never expected the bravery required would be mine.

This is the secret parenting challenge no one tells you about.

That having spent two decades keeping them alive – cutting grapes in quarters, slathering sunscreen on every millimetre of skin and pulling them back from curbs and cords – you’re suddenly faced with dropping them off at Gate 32 and trusting the world will do the rest.

Liam Neeson in a scene from film Taken 3. Picture: Supplied

But what do you do when the world is unsafe?

When planes are crashing with alarming regularity and kids her age are dying from spiked drinks and the places she’s adventuring are smack between what some are now calling the Axis of Ill Will: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

I drive home from the airport replaying the plot of the Liam Neeson movie Taken, where his daughter is kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring.

How have I let her leave the relative playpen of these safe shores?

MATTER OF TRUST

Because this is what I unwittingly signed up for.

Because all that love and guidance and support were stepping stones to right here. To this moment when she would step into this febrile and unpredictable world without me by her side.

While I can’t trust it, I can trust her.

I trust her because back in 1992 I did the same.

I took off with a backpack and a boyfriend.

I survived sleeping on the beach in Alicante and the 1-star hotel in Paris with the crumbling fire escape and my backpack, with all its possessions, being stolen.

I survived fighting with my boyfriend as he insisted lodging the police report even though I was the one with travel insurance, and I survived the nasty eye infection that a doctor later told me could’ve left me blind.

Travel essentials: Credit card, phone ... and all the apps. Picture: iStock

What’s more I did it all without a phone, the 21st century’s umbilical cord to Mum and Dad.

While we were travelling I was vaguely aware of deadly floods in southern France. But that year also marked the beginning of the Bosnian war, the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King and the crisis unfolding in Somalia. But what is youth for if not to be adventurous and invincible?

That trip made me.

I learned to read maps and handle loneliness and that the most profound experiences are often accidents.

That independence is both thrilling and essential, and relationships are meant to be tested.

That places imprint themselves on you and the memories will embroider your life forevermore.

As I resist the urge to text Lilibelle every hour and manically stalk her location, I’m trying to think of her like one of those floating paper lanterns.

Fragile, yes, but illuminated and carried by forces I cannot control.

Her life is hers now and my redundancy is a good thing.

What an honour it is to slip to the wings and let her stride out onto a stage of her own making.

I’ll wash her sheets and keep my phone charged and try to remember that the fumbling, faithful, fierce act of loving someone so much means dimming myself and marvelling as she lights her own torch.

I’ll wait for her call to tell me that the world, despite everything, is still magic.

ANGE’S A-LIST

ROMANCE REWOUND: Much as I loathe TV shows that come as a weekly drop, the four-part Mix Tape (Binge) is looking promising. Anyone who grew up in the era of actual mix tapes will be reminded of how those cassettes underscored our nascent love lives.

PLUMP POWER: The jury is out on supplements but I’m a collagen fan and am loving a new gel-type sachet from Calmerceuticals. Unlike some of the powders you have to mix up, this travel-friendly product by Australian founder Rose Rayner has the maximum dose of marine collagen peptides designed to improve skin, hair and nails