Another Step

My husband and I went up to see our college sophomore recently.  Her school is less than two hours away, and with a year’s experience under our belts, as well as a train station on campus with regular service to Boston, we've relaxed a bit, knowing we can get to her, or she to us, should it become necessary.  In her second year, she's familiar with the routine, has a bunch of friends in her major, and is beginning to look forward to internships for next year. In short, she’s growing and maturing.

As am I.

Her sophomore year in college is our sophomore year as empty-nesters.  I confess, a year ago August, after we dropped her off and drove home, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. Since the great layoff of 2009, I’d embraced two things: writing, and the time I could spend with our growing girl.  I was so grateful for our school afternoons together, coffee dates, breakfast dates, shopping excursions and trips to the movies, because I’d never had them, and I knew they would be short lived.   In the late summer of 2011, the last of the sand trickled through the hour glass on that marvelous opportunity, and she was gone.  For a few hours, I walked around like a shell of myself, bereft.  Then my husband took me out to dinner, and we talked . . . all night.  And I remembered, before there were three, there were two.  We’d had nine years of married life and friendship before our daughter arrived.  Nineteen years later, we still make a good team.

So this summer, while I admit to getting a little antsy when it was time for our girl to pack up again, I knew I’d survive when she left, because I’d done it before.  Still, for the first week she was gone, I stomped around, pausing for long moments at the open door of her room, to stare at the pink shag rug, the photo collage she left behind, posters she hung in high school.  A year ago, when she left, it felt like she’d gone to an extended summer camp, that she’d return and we’d get back to our routine.  Now it’s her second year and I get it. Even though she’ll be back for vacations, perhaps a summer or two, maybe even for a period after she graduates, she’ll never really live here again.  She’s developing her own personality, learning independence and sculpting her own future.  When she comes home, she’ll have her own schedule, her own agenda and her own priorities.

As it pertains to motherhood, I've had a pretty good grasp always, of the fleeting nature of things.  Back in 2006, I wrote: “Every stage…seems like it will last forever.  Then one day you turn around and forever has ended.”

Six years later, I'll edit that sentence.  Forever doesn't end, it just morphs into something different we adjust to while our girl moves on, doing what she's supposed to, developing her new life. 

As she does that, hard as it is sometimes, I remind myself it's time to focus inward, so I can continue developing my own.

(For MES.)