Ira Glass is Always There

I made fried cauliflower and potatoes for dinner. In one pan, because it was for only one person in the house.

My youngest son and my husband were away at a soccer tournament and my two oldest ones, as of five days ago, now go to college together. (dropping off the second child is no easier than dropping off the first. if anything, you feel it more because you now know the ache of their absence. my hope is that in their lonely times -- not saying they're going to have them, but if they do  -- that they remember how I hung on their necks when we said goodbye)

From a household of five two years ago, to one person here, the one typing this.

I ate angel food cake for breakfast and for lunch I scrambled eggs with cheese and cream in the same pan I ate out of.

I lived by myself once, for five years. That time then never felt like this day today.

Because I didn't know. I do now, but I didn't know then what it feels like to have people you've had in your life since the first seconds they were born, living somewhere else.

I look in the mirror and wonder if I would have recognized myself in this reflection 30 years ago.

I've had twenty years of weekends with three boys, but this weekend, I'm taking myself for two walks a day, and catching up on my Ira Glass. Faithful Ira Glass.

If you see me later at the store cradling a family size box of Lucky Charms, assume that all is well, and it's just me missing the days of when 64 oz. of cereal lasted two days.

I miss the full house, but it's not all broken cracking heart pieces.

I miss my children, but space has cleared up to catch up on Ira, because room has been made from not having to clean my children's bathrooms anymore.

 

* * *

I Still Have 24 Hours

The other night when we went for our walk (my gosh how I love our walks) I noticed how much too quickly the long days of summer are ending. Night comes at us faster now, and so does the time until you leave for your first year in college.


This is a new beginning, like all your graduation cards said. It's a new beginning, and it springs from your time spent with us. This is the nature of the life cycle, and growing up and letting go and the day of your leaving for Madison is here in 24 hours.

 

I still have 24 ours of you living at home with us, as you have for the past 18 years.

 

 

It's hard to say goodbye because I have been with you since the first second you were born. Think of how that is, to not have you here next to me the way you have been for your entire life. As soon as the nurses placed you in my arms, a lump grew in my throat as I thought about how I would only have you for a while, and it's that thought that I've kept in my heart with every second of being with you, talking with you, loving you, and being in awe of you. What a gift it is to be your mother! I knew that time with you, every day of it, would be steps of letting go at every milestone: the first coo, the first smile, the first giggle, the first steps, the first words, the first day at school.

In one day, we will drive you to a new home, and a school that will be yours. You will be in a new place, and we will both be in a new space. College is where your future will take on more dimension, though seeds of it can be seen when I look back on your days.

I remember standing in front of the house with you when your were three years old. I had read of an experiment to do with bug lovers—something you already were by then. Insects were something that fascinated you since you could point. The directions told us to place a white sheet under a shrub and shake the branches, the goal would be to inspect all the bugs that would fall out. And so we did, we shook and oh my gosh with wide eyes we looked. The unbelieving amazement in your eyes at the amount of life that had just seconds before been invisible to us, is one of the mile markers in how I knew who you were: someone in wonder of nature. The rest of that day we spent carrying that white sheet from bush to bush, and you stood shaking branches and then stooping down to not just look, but to classify each type of bug that was revealed. You were fascinated then -- as you still are -- with the sky, with biology, with weather, with physics, with science, with the creation of the world we live in.

It's this, seeing you grow into the loving, kind, wise, compassionate, introspective person that you are, that has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I wrote you a long list of things I know are important to a happy, satisfying, content and purposeful life. I'll give it to you when we drop you off Sunday, because I know how that will be. With me hiccupping and hanging on tight and trying to talk, and then starting all over with hiccupping again.


That's what we all want, you know, to have someone love us enough to hiccup over. If we know we matter, if we know we have made the world better, if we've had a chance to contribute and feel how we do make a difference, this fills us with a sense of pride and belief. We know our world needs us in it.


I can tell you that you've made a difference in our household of five: and in my world, especially. You've turned my life into one I couldn't have dreamed of, but I know that you want to feel that same significance for yourself, from your own labor.

I pray that I have helped you realize your worth and significance in the time I've had you, Xavier.


You'll be away at school, yes, but you will forever live here in my heart. And if you do feel alone and a little bit lost from time to time, remember that just at that moment, there is someone back home holding your picture and sending you love.

Today, I have 24 hours, and we will begin with all that I have come to know about you, like the way you like a day to start with cinnamon rolls, moving on to our long walks while we talk. And tonight, we'll have our last night with you home. You need to be prepared to be the one to step away from a hug that doesn't want to end.

I love you, Xavier. I am so proud, and so very fortunate, to be the person who has the honor of signing this,

With Love,

Your Mom

 

 

* * * 

To Remind Yourself to Breathe

Since Sunday, I've needed to find a place to take a breath, and it's been impossible. For 18 years now, I've been the mother of this child you see here. When I took this picture, he had been riding a bicycle on his own without the steadying hand of either me or his father for the whole of two feet. I ran alongside while my son shouted, “Did Dad let go? Is it me alone?!”

“It's you alone!" I called back while he concentrated straight ahead. "No one's hanging on!" And with that, he burst into a fresh force of adrenaline, the wind behind him as he pumped with the exhilaration of doing what he didn't think he could do.

I remember the moment, forgetting to breathe then because I always forget to move air in and out of my lungs when I'm watching my children to make sure that the air they need keeps moving in and out. We had let go, and I held my breath as he took off on his own.

Since Sunday, we've had a houseful of people who came to celebrate this boy's high school graduation. Our house is filled, and there is not a corner anywhere for me to sit and be with this season that has come to an end.

 

I need to pause with the enormity of this next step for the both of us. It leaves me needing more oxygen than our atmosphere offers. My son, the one who was handed to me by a labor and delivery nurse, is now being handed over by me, to the world. I know all the blessings that come with this, and I fully am aware of the good fortune to have a child, to have him reach adulthood, to have him be healthy and of sound mind. I know that.

But he will begin his own life now, with the steps that I witnessed him take on Sunday as he marched to Pomp and Circumstance. And I remember his first unsteadiness as he took to the bike by himself, believing what he could do because we believed he could. 

You know what would help me with today? A new language. One that isn't slowed by the clumsy work of taking that which leaves us breathless and us, trying to give it volume.

How do you express yourself when it's all trapped in your heart?

I try here, because I need to lift the words up and forward, to push them along so that I don't feel this weight that sits in my chest. I am thrilled for my son, excited at all that waits for any young person after high school. I remember how much of an adult I felt when at this very same stage. But the current that runs underneath my joy at seeing his eyes spark and his voice grow louder as he talks about school in September, is one that I try to shake away. It remains suspended, and I need room for these new feelings that I knew would be part of this transition for me.

I see him in this picture. I recall the smile on his face, with the two bottom teeth missing, as he peddled and the handlebars wobbled too far over to the right for my comfort. But he rode his bicycle on his own, and then, he was the breathless one right along with me when he saw what he was capable of.

For the last 12 years, I've driven my son to school. Today was the first day that I didn't. My role now is the one that was in the picture above--letting go.

 

I stand back as they call his name. My heart pounds. I still my arms that want to rush forward and walk up with him. I step to the side as he comes off the stage, smiling when he looks at me though my eyes are shiny. I feel his adrenaline from making his way.

I see him and my heart cries, “You're doing it! It's you!” And we've let go.

 

   

* * *

Parenting in a New Language

I don't want to say visit.

I don't want to have him only home for awhile.

I don't want to say goodbye after not enough time.

I don't want to until I'm blue in the face, and then I realize, it's me that has to do the growing up.

---
When you think it's your kids that need to stay the same, it's actually you that has to change.

I am proud to be on Grown and Flown with a collaborative piece with Peyton Price: "What Having A Kid Away in College is Truly Like."

"There’s nothing more discomfiting than a good long look at your college kid’s changing face. Is that a new haircut? Does she wear her glasses all day now? Where did he get that shirt? Is he filling out? Since when does her skin look so good? SOMETHING’S DIFFERENT [read more here]... "

 

* * * 

"Because Parenting Never Ends... "

When my first baby was born, I was desperate for company. I had to find a space where others looked like and walked around like me, dazed-confused-befuddled-panicked. I found it in my birthing hospital's Diaper Bag Club. Sweet mother of God, those women saved me.

Now that first baby is away at college. Cue the ugly cry. I miss him and I'm not a fan of people telling me, "YOU NEED TO LET THEM GROW UP YOU SICK SICK SICK WOMAN." I want to be with others, who fall apart at the grocery store when they pass the Dr. Pepper on the shelf because it's his favorite soda and you don't have to bring it home any more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have found such a group, Grown and Flown. "Because parenting never ends." They've got a great community and are a fantastic resource for those like me, with children about to launch.

My friend, the brilliant haiku-ist (how cool am I that I know a haiku master) Peyton Price and I collaborated on a piece for Grown and Flown. We write of  "The BlurbText," when you have to parent from a distance. With the promise of a 3-second text, there's a 50/50 chance your kids will read it.

And if not, well, at least you know you did your part to warn them about the importance of eating 5 baby carrots a day. *it's true*

I hope you click over and read our BlurbTexts. We've included a starter pack of beginner's texts for you.

xo

* * *

Go Ahead, You Can Miss Them

They're our children. Our son, our daughter. They are our family, and we're their parent. For a long time, we were more than their main caretaker. We loved them, adored them, obsessed and fussed over them--so star struck in love with them that every eyelash length, we knew. Every freckle and its placement on their arm, we knew.

We were the only ones they wanted when all they knew was that they wanted. "Only mommy," my children would say when someone else stepped in to bathe them, dress them, feed them. 24 hour days, from breakfast through to dinner, from waking up through sleep in the night, our children are the undercurrent that hums in our life. They are the hub and all else radiates from that center.

But they grow up, and they start on the path that leads to life on their own. Kindergarten, middle school, camp away, travels alone, first love, college, their own families. They have to.

But somehow, if we shed a tear and say that we miss our children, we're told that we smother. That our tears are selfish and crippling and we should feel shame for how we sickly cling. As if our tears are a twisted prayer for time to hold off and keep our children from their own lives.

All I've wanted to do in my life is to be real. To leap into the love I have for the ones most important to me by being there, with open arms and an equally open heart, and have a place for them inside of me that will never grow cold.

I spent the first minute that I met my children looking down at them through a blur of tears so thick I couldn't make out their faces. As the nurses brought them to me, I took them in with trembling hesitancy for fear of crushing their small form. I've since held them in a fearless bone-breaking embrace, sobbing hard enough to soak through the shoulders of their clothes as they moved from their first home with me into their first one without me. I know what has made them laugh, cry, be happy, and scared. I know what they liked to eat, what they found funny, their favorite kind of weather and how I knew they were tired by the way their faces grew paler than usual.

When I hear someone's harsh words telling me I should only have one reaction to witnessing my children as they reach milestones, and it should be without tears, I can't understand. Yes, my tears have been part of each step they've taken into their own existence: but it is from overwhelming emotion of having a life spent with them. My goodbye holds within it the one that came before and the one to come after. Why is there no space allowed for new bearings as we see life shift?

My tears were part of the goodbye when I first dropped my children off for their first playdate without me. My tears were there again when I waved goodbye, seemingly forever, as they turned and looked, turned and looked, to see me watching them from the front of our home on their first morning walking to school alone. On the day they first sensed that someone outside of their family liked them, my heart seized goodbye then when I caught a flash of secret smile meant only for them.

I say a thousand goodbyes a thousand different times, and each one with tears, as my children practice and discover life without me. I breathe a shaky goodbye one breath of love at a time. I say goodbye for every treasured second of their days spent with me. I whisper a watery-eyed goodbye that is not visible to them with each step they take into their own, setting the words to the wind knowing they'll carry through and surround them.

And when I'm gone from here, I will have said enough goodbyes in my lifetime that I am confident will fill the silence in my childrens' hearts. They will hear my warbly-voiced on the edge of tears words I love you I miss you I am so glad my life was with you.


Why are we shamed for weeping as we witness our childrens' lives unfold? There is joy and gratitude that cannot be held within a pat on the back and a hug of congratulations. To have had such a life, spent in such a privileged place in someone's life!

What other outlet is there that can speak in a language adequate enough to translate for a heart that bursts wide with pride, excitement, appreciation and love for them--if not one's tears?

I will not be shamed for crying tears over my children. Because I know every memory, hope and wish that exists in each hot drop that falls for only them.

 

* * * 

 

You can find more of my writing here:

 

ScaryMommy

 

Purple Clover

 

Huffington Post

 

 



What You End Up Saying Instead of I Love You

It would be perfect: I had memorized every word the night before. Actually, more like the early morning of. At 2:19 a.m., I knew exactly what I was going to say and do when we dropped off our oldest son at college the next day.

I would stand before him, like the Virgin Mary. Offering gentle outstretched hands with my head leaning just slightly to the side, I would pull my child in close. Reaching up to smooth his hair, his trusting eyes would search out mine. I would smile with the peaceful restraint of someone who had just been drugged and sigh, "My beautiful baby boy. How proud we are of you, how well you will do this year. We love you so!" Then we would share a brief but meaningful hug with the end goal being lasting just long enough to cement the moment. His arms over mine, I would whisper, "Goodbye, my son!" I would then turn, no looking back, and walk to our minivan, on firm--not Jello--legs. And then, it would be over. Goodbye with a noble chin up like Margaret Thatcher.

Ha!

Wednesday's college drop-off went like this: Our son walks us to the car. We knew it was the goodbye. My resolve is to gift him with the reassuring calm of our love and wisdom. What sprang forth instead, was:

Use single-ply for toilet paper because double-ply plugs. You have to sleep or you'll start to feel depressed. Make sure you smile back so you look happy to be here. Never put your drinking cups mouth side down on counters because so many germs. Wash your hands because other people wipe their butts and they never wash their hands. I've seen it.

He tried to step away for air as I made his neck into a lifesaver.

Did that stop my brilliance? Nope. I shout directions like I did that night almost two decades ago when we first left him with a babysitter.

Clenching him by his shirt, I start anew:

Don't lend money. Look over your shoulder when you walk home alone at night and do not walk home with earbuds in so you can hear if someone is following you. Eat protein or you'll feel depressed. Always take a shower because it's like a miracle. So is a new shirt, so let me know and I'll send you some. Good posture and a good haircut save many a day.

Then I fall full-face into my son, in the same desperate way that he would try to crawl back up into my arms and out of his small plastic bathtub when he was four months old.

I couldn't stop. My voice muffled by his chest, I continue.

Read labels so you know what you're eating. In your white plastic bin are three bottles of vitamins and calcium each, take them. Change your toothbrush when it's splayed. Drink water. Keep a hat--earmuffs aren't the same--in your backpack. And an umbrella--because chills and rain come out of nowhere in Wisconsin. Move five minutes for every hour of sitting. If you think you need to go to the health clinic, don't think, go.

I force down the lump rising in my throat. I don't know why I am on this mission, but I am. I caw, Purell. Wet socks are bad. Be sure and see some blue and green every day, because scurvy is real.

All the while I am spouting verses that sound like Mother Goose, the real message has yet to happen. My beautifully rehearsed golden college send-off speech that I am determined to carry out.

It's now or never for the final goodbye, so I square my shoulders and step back. I open my mouth to bestow my practiced pearls of love and wisdom upon my son, and I hear a crackled glottal fry worse than a Kardashian fill the air.

Suddenly, streams. No, rivers. Waterfalls. I lunge for my son and a flood of tears that would not stop soak his shirt while I am back to swinging from his neck like a weighted pendulum. I try to break through but the moment swallows me up and I am croaking like a frog.

Never has my voice disappointed me more.

"Mom," my son asks, sounding genuinely puzzled. "Why are you crying?"

He asks me so simply, as if words could answer. I squeeze my eyes and hide my face in his neck. I pull on both his shoulders and want him to know that I just need him to do all these things I've sputtered at him like someone who has five minutes to blow up fifty balloons.

I can't be here anymore to make sure he does everything so I need him to.
I need him to listen to this manual on how to care for himself and all these things I've thrown at him will keep him safe, sound, healthy, happy.
I have taken care of him his entire life, and now, I won't be here to do it.
He has to be the one to make sure he arrives home every night.
Without earbuds in.

Because this beautiful baby boy, the one we are so proud of, the one who is going to do so well, we love him so much.

And if there was a google translator that he could plug in to make sense of my, "Wash your hands because others don't and earmuffs are not the same as a hat," it would tell him with 100 percent accuracy, "Your mama loves you so much it leaves her stupid."

* * *

 

*Special thanks to my dear friend who is walking this path with me, Peyton Price of Suburban Haiku, for providing the inspiration for this post. Times like this, friends carry us. 

Dear College Freshman Child

Yaaaaaasssss... perfect!

Dear Son:

You've been away at college for five nights now. We miss you but are thrilled for this new chapter in your life. I mean, we all knew you were ready for this step, busting at the seams of this parent/child role was something we all felt. We miss you 'round the clock and your siblings left back home really feel the loss of your presence, especially on family outings. They asked me to write you a letter so that you would know just how much life sucking fun you've been missing.

No need for us to go into the Costco trip you missed Friday morning when your dad came home with gas can sized containers of corn oil that we have piled up against the sink, I mean -- those are just incidental happenings.

No, your brothers want you to know about the #deeplife that is going on this Labor Day weekend. Like today.

Today was the day your dad decided to relive moments of his boyhood. Your brothers explained it to me this way, "You have your writing, mom, dad has his days of what once was." And so this is how it came to be that your dad piled us into the family van this morning and set up the GPS, whose directions he ignored most of the drive up (Ms. GPS no longer even pretends to be patient) and we drove the two hours your dad needed to, to get what was once for him the childhood marking of a summer's end.

We went to small town Wisconsin where today was "Cornival Day," so named because three! free ears of corn are promised to everyone in attendance at the Cornival. You know what's weird, Alec? Your dad never mentioned Cornival Day to me. Ev-er. Anyhow, in theory, since there were four of us in attendance (again, we miss you sorely) we could have brought our Trader Joe's canvas bags and had them filled with 12 ears of grilled corn, but since only your dad was interested in end-of-summer symbolic feeding, we just waited in line (like some kind of outer space aliens were feeding us from a truck, but that's just my opinion) for the three ears of the free corn, for him.

Your brother, Xavier, wants you to know that he volleyed back and forth about whether or not to purchase "chips" at a food stand because "chips" for sale on a sign with "chips" written in black marker "quotes" makes for an unsettling description, add to the fact that they came in "all kinds." He paid the 50 cents for the "chips" but ate them "tentatively."

We missed you today. Your father had a grand time reliving Cornival Days gone by, but the rest of us, the three of us, felt out of our realm. I say out of our realm, Auggie describes it as "unbearable air smelling of Spam." 

I was okay with your dad searching out his corn roast memories. Even the full lines at the drive-through liquor stores that we passed on the way into town didn't worry me. Today was an important family excursion for your dad and I think he needed to do this as a way of working through his feelings on you being up and flown. As your brothers said, I have my writing to work through life transitions. I can talk to you like an adult now, Alec, so I'm going to tell you, your dad was working through some shit.

Your brothers were rough on your dad, I'll admit. I knew he was going through some intense thoughtful moments, and maybe your brothers went too far in calling today a "crushed memories and broken corn cob dreams" family outing.

It wasn't that bad. I mean, yes... unfamiliar and something we're not used to. For example, the turkey  sandwiches we purchased were turkey porridge (Auggie called it brain soup for zombies) on store brand hamburger buns BUT all that can be tolerated by simply tossing the wet sandwich away and considering the $3.00 purchase price a donation toward the free cornfestivus corn. 

And there were some unexpected moments of delight -- like Magic Mark who performed magic tricks, silently -- though he wasn't in a mime outfit, while following along and interactively learning with the audience to the DVD Magic For You! that he had playing on a two foot thick TV on a TV tray to his right.

It's all perspective, I explained to your brothers.

Where else could we see Cornival clientele arguing with game booth workers over the number of balloons they popped with a dart, three chances for a dollar, and the size prize they felt they should have received rather than the one they did receive. Life can be a book, or a Twilight Zone episode, that you step into.

You would have enjoyed today's outing, Dear Son. If you talk to your brothers, it was close to but not as awful as they describe it. The "chips" were tolerable. With your dad paying no mind to the chattering of the GPS, we found our way home. Your family survived this Labor Day without you. More than anything, we missed you.

We made your dad happy today, though there was a moment that we caught him wistful -- almost as if he expected someone to recognize him from 40 years ago. But we returned home, no worse for wear.

Although Auggie says that today made him hate corn forever.

 

* * *

More News from The Nervous Parents Gazette

My firstborn started college this week and I am cycling through these phases of him being away like a pro.

After sending my son a text as soon as I woke up this morning, I haven't heard back. Rather than busying myself with daily life until he responds, I'm going to do what I do best. What I gold star in. 

I'm assuming he's in danger. 

I don't play around with this Nervous Parent stuff. It's my style. As a little girl, I would wring my hands over my baby Chihuahua, Pepe, whenever he'd shove the food around in his dish with his  nose. I knew just what his actions meant -- that this was the beginning of the end and that he was never going to eat again. 

Being on the homefront while the first of your baby birds has left the nest is no simple task for the nervous parent. We're not like the rest of you, and either you'll pick up when I'm puttin' down here, or you'll just send me links to articles from Psychology Today with titles like 50 Ways That Nervous Parents Destroy Their Children. And then you'll sign your email, "I say this because I love you, have you sought professional help?"

I've heard it all. I'm no stranger to the nonsense that worry is. And yet, I've made it into a hobby, a past time, and a mental game of ping pong that bruises my brain into the size of The Great Gazoo.

This is how a day in the life of a nervous parent goes when their son's first day away from home, is today: 

6:30 a.m. My eyes popped open. Had to text my son or I couldn't sleep. He needed to save the receipts from the books he was going to buy today. Sent him text.

6:32 a.m. Lie back down. Await quick response back.

7:00 a.m. Unable to fall back asleep. Decide instead to imagine son slipped on water that roommate spilled on floor night before and now son has been lying unconscious since 3 a.m. with roommate snoring and unaware only two feet away. 

7:39 a.m. Cursing myself for not telling son he needs to respond to texts with "Yes I'm alive." It's all I need, just a confirmation of being alive.

8:19 a.m. Try to eat a yogurt. Can't. Yogurt triggers panic that son didn't check expiration date on his yogurt so grabbed dairy botulised yogurt while sleep walking and now lying unconscious from food poisoning, only two feet away from roommate. 

8:42 a.m. Visualize son walking to breakfast this morning when man in white windowless van pulled up and asked him for directions. When polite son leaned in to answer, man grabbed son's head by the neck and pulled him into said van and sped away. Enhance scene with details of van without license plates, making said perp unable to be identified. Like ever.

9:23 a.m. Sit on hands, thereby disenabling myself from calling campus police to check on son.

10:09 a.m. Thinking perhaps son played early morning game of basketball. When basket made, he disturbed a hornet's nest with over 200 wasps inside. While running away to escape hornets, son tripped on untied shoe lace and is now in student health center, unable to give nurse in attendance my phone number so I can be alerted to son's status. 

10:56 a.m. Thinking how it's almost 11 a.m. There is no text back. Reason must be that phone charger burst into flames like that story on FB this morning from China about the smoking phone charger.

11:16 a.m. Thinking son went to find a church, as I had suggested. Church was charming, but a charismatic cult. Now my son is being held until he speaks in tongues. Hoping son speaks in language that says "Call my mother!"

12:04 p.m. Thinking son was followed by a disoriented older woman who mistakenly believes my son is her son. He's my son. I need to drive there and tell woman this important bit of information but first I need to find birth certificate for proof.

12:47 p.m. Thinking son accepted a FB friend request from someone's hijacked account and now he's on his way to meet who he thinks is someone from grade school but is actually this crazed woman who still believes my son is her son. 

1:17 p.m. Thinking someone on son's dorm floor brought in left over fireworks from the fourth of July. And they set them off in my son's dorm room.

2:10 p.m. Positive son's phone exploded in his pocket like that post about that kid in California that someone posted on FB this morning.

3:12 p.m. Son must be sleeping. He's been sleeping all day because he has sleeping sickness from a tsetse fly. No matter that this hasn't happened in America since 1966.

4:09 p.m. I call husband at work. Husband doesn't have a chance to talk because I do all the talking. I talk-convince myself that if anything had happened, son's school would have called me. Before hanging up the phone, I thank husband for wise advice.

5:05 p.m. No other explanation other than son must be lost. Due to amnesia from being hysterically blinded from homesickness. Chastise myself for encouraging and enabling strong mother/son bond that he misses me to this degree.

5:48 p.m. Try to eat dinner. Only able to take liquid nourishment. Sigh and accept loss of appetite. Wanted to lose 8-12 lbs anyway.

6:10 p.m. Decide to go for walk to relieve agitation. Halfway into walk, I receive a vision. It is of my son falling out of loft bed due to night time confusion over new surroundings. Race home, heart pounding.

7:15 p.m. Hear husband's phone ding. It's text from son. Son says "busy day. bought books. went for 4 mile run. met with friends and on way to bonfire. having a great time. "

7:17 p.m. I ask husband to text son back, tell him sorry I haven't had a chance to call all day. Glad he's having fun, if I have time, I'll try to squeeze a call in tomorrow.

7:26 p.m. Doing dinner dishes, heart begins to race. Wishing I had discussed importance of bonfire safety before son left for college.

 

 * * *    

Last Day

I'm trying to sleep tonight, but a lump in my throat keeps me awake. Tomorrow, is here. The morning that I've put out of my head, preferring to not think about, has come. I'll drive my oldest son to school today for the last time. After that, he leaves in just ten weeks for his own life. I shake my head at the unreality of reality and keep saying to myself, 18 years? That was no 18 years  -- someone's lying.  

Life overwhelms me right now. The feelings of love and attachment too large to contain that they push against my heart and throat. I try to keep them in this week and they look for any way out, springing tears from my eyes or making the sound of my voice like a tight string. As if I'm girding up against a watershed of emotion that will flatten me. 

Today is his last day of school from a place where he's been every morning that I've woken up. I am disoriented, muddled, in the daze of a new land. I am proud, thrilled, intoxicated, delighted, grateful, honored, at having been his mother. 

This morning is like that day when he was first placed in my arms, swaddled tight, and it felt like a ceremony. Like the world was trusting me with the most important thing on the planet. The warmth and weight of him surprised me. I looked down at his face, so in love with him, wanting to say

I'm your mom
You're my son

My mouth opened and closed, croaking out nothing, only tasting the salt of my tears instead.

I love you, Alec. I love you, so much. This life passes quickly, though I can't say it sneaks up on us. I've been looking over my shoulder these years, knowing this day was always there. Thank you, my son, this time of you as my little boy, has been the most wonderful of my life.

*Here is the little man above, today:

* * *

I Don't Understand This Weepiness Over High School Graduation

This whole week on the internet, there have been posts, Facebook updates, pinterested pinterests on the woeful parent saying good-bye and good luck to their child moving on from his days at home. Life beyond the four walls you've given them, and their turn to leave our two arms that have held them for so long. There are new beginnings on the wide horizon! And always, these posts end in "hold me" "tears" and "where did my baby go??" Sometimes, they use an interrobang.

I don't get it.

So your child is ready to spread his wings, this is a good thing, right? I mean, this is evidence that we've been successful, no failure to launch at this house! All of us had that as our goal.

The first time our son mowed the lawn at this house, he looked like this:

 

And now he looks like this:

 

When we moved into our house, our dark-haired boy looked like this:

 

And this past Christmas, in front of the very same fireplace, we had someone who looked like this:

 

 He stands above me now

when I once could hold him, the entire whole of him, with one arm.



The boy who has always talked of airplanes, flying, of someday being a pilot so much that every year at every fair, the first ride he would run to would be this one:

 

is now getting his dream with an Air Force ROTC scholarship.

Sappiness, nostalgia, poignancy, bittersweet, the march of time. What are people getting verklempt about? You mean going from this?

 

To this?

 

Is that it?

There's a trick to it all, you know. Pretend the days last forever. Go about your way and when his almost 6 foot frame reminds you of the months ticking down until he starts the life you hoped and dreamed for him, find that smile -- practice it in front of a mirror so that you look borderline lunatic. Do it, keep on doing it, until you convince everyone around you.

It's all good. Because it is all good.

If, as I've heard, tears and a lump in your throat that you can't swallow away show up on graduation day, remember it's just part of the beautiful messiness of life, of moments too big to contain, of a world that's been so good to us, why wouldn't there be tears from the joy and excitement?

Looking at these pictures doesn't bother me. Really. They're photos of my life, our life, together. Packed with love that is more than four letters powerful. Of time spent with my son that feels like he's been with me since my own life began. This boy lives in my body, my bones, my heart.

These pictures show you something, but not everything. How does an image capture love, pride, inspiration and gratitude that I have for the days shared with him? *insert interrobang* There's no painful heartbreak, just surreal disbelief of such a good life.

And I'm going to be fine.

That's another trick I've learned to maneuver through these days looming with high school graduation now too real to ignore, my 24-hour mantra, I'm going to be fine.

I love you, my boy. I am so proud when I hear people say as I walk past, "That's Alec's mom."

I think these came to the wrong house.

* * *





New Resource for Parents with Firstborn Children Leaving Home!

The Child Rearing Yearning (CRY) Institute announces that it has released a new resource kit for parents readying their lives, homes, and hearts for the day just months ahead of when their baby first child leaves home.

CRY's new manual is designed especially for a small discussion group (ideally, one crying parent, one lonely cup of coffee in the pre-dawn hours) but may be used in a larger group, preferably one that is not popping champagne corks while enlisting an architect to redesign the soon to be empty upstairs bedroom.

"Transitions and Golden Sunsets" is a workbook compiled by CRY for those who have made the choice to view this season of life as a time to linger and ruminate on the days of being an at home parent to the baby they waited their entire life for. CRY's guides and videos are divided into six-90 minute sections, each covering such topics as Torturing Yourself with the First Baby Tooth Pictures, My Baby Says Mama! essay section, and The Mommy and Me Remember Me Please music circle tapes.

CRY kit owners will be encouraged to explore and examine their feelings about this day of launching that is approaching faster than a bullet train. Assignments will discuss expectations such as Disc One: How Much Crying is Too Much Crying and desensitization of feelings, Disc Two: Baby Steps To Walking Past His Now Empty Room.

Our manual offers information on the latest research regarding the needs of those recently struggling with the new face of displacement. (Contest info included! Send us your photographs! Could YOU be our next face?) Don't look away, because together with CRY's online forum, parents will be instructed in ways that reflect their own values and interests on how to fill the hours of their days until the first school break. Aptitude tests are included to help with re-awakening 30-year-old dormant interests and prompts to encourage new areas of possible exploration.

Sections of self-assurance are offered in which topics such as Did My Parenting Even Matter, to Will He Remember The Time I Let Him Make Me Into His Pony For Twelve Hours, will be covered.

At each chapter's end, tips are offered on ways to develop a supportive community and to recognize the need for renewal of spirit and appreciation for the days of the golden past. Homework reading assignments of This Is You 2.0!, complete with journaling and worksheets provided. Extra credit is given for documented hours out of the home. Well-meaning attempts to leave, such as a fresh change of clothes before 11 a.m. are given half credit.

The CRY kit may be used individually, though we recommend it be implemented in like-minded parenting groups, where company will serve as a source of distraction and quasi-substitute for your child's presence.

•  FriendMatch.com is available as an upgrade to CRY's Platinum package level.
• At special request, CRY offers its Diamond package, for those whose child's absence is felt deeply and excruciatingly to the soul.
• CRY will provide unlimited phone and email support to those who evidence need. Personal statement is sufficient. 

CRY wants to be there for you. Please email handleitmama@homenomore.org or send us a note snail mail, every day. It will fill the time while you wait out your child's request of a minimum of four hours between texts.

 

 

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Other Places You Can Find Me This Week:

Huffington Post

Aiming Low

MetroParent Milwaukee

Purple Clover