A chance for all of us to grow will come with this goodbye

One of my blessings with one of hers

"What's the biggest thing on your mind right now?"

           ---My friend Maureen,over a glass of wine

Every so often, when I'm tangled, I go to the altar of Oprah and try, as she describes it, to "be still and ask myself, what is this trying to teach me?"

More often than my friend Maureen probably intended, that question of "the biggest thing"  has centered me even more than the words of Oprah.

One day last week, after dealing with a funk that has had me on my own nerves for a couple of weeks, I woke up feeling so much  happier and easier to please, it made me kind of, I don't know, nervous.

A funk is not lonely and exhausting like depression is. A funk is impatient and restless. A depression makes you circle the same negative thoughts about how wrong you were about life.  A funk makes you annoyed with anyone who interrupts your frustration to ask if things are better.  

And I'll say this about coming out of a funk.  When people claim that, in the middle of a weighty, confusing time, they just looked around and counted their blessings and felt better, I want to say:

You're not helping the rest of us.

You can know very well how blessed and fortunate you are. You can look out the window and see the sun shining, and you can reflect on your good friends, and your endless luck and serendipity and bullets dodged, and it will not make a bit of difference  if you are unable to shove the clutter aside and dig out the biggest thing on your mind.

Sometimes you have to look for it, that big thing that is corrupting the small things.

It is almost always something that feels beyond your control, a thing you want but can't get, or something you have and can't get rid of.  It might be about wondering if you're all you were, or knowing that you are, but won't be forever.

At age never mind, I've learned that "being still" can be harder than either locating the biggest thing or  what it is trying to teach you. It takes practice to  make it quiet enough to hear your own heart.   

My daughter will move to California next month. Have I known about this for several months?  Do I know that this is the most exciting thing that has happened to her? Do I know that she's wanted this for eight years, and that  if it were taken away from her, I would feel as devastated as she would? And would I do anything to help her open every door if the chance for her happiness might be behind it?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

And. 

Do I have total faith in her ability to seize this opportunity, embrace the discoveries and power through the adjustments?  You bet I do.

And.

When I am grocery shopping and reaching for vine tomatoes and realize that I miss her, will I be unable for the first time in twenty-eight years to book brunch on Sunday, or meet for a walk by the Charles? Yes, I will be unable to do that. We had that brunch and that walk, our last for a while, two weeks ago. 

The next day, I woke up and my funk was sitting there. "I just wanted to make sure you knew that the greatest factor in close relationships is proximity," said my funk.

Soon after, I met Sam for dinner in Boston. We covered the usual subjects; his job, my writing, what everyone in the family was up to. We talked about change; expectations of a year ago, the ones which have or haven't materialized. We agreed that living in the present is about making it worth remembering in the future.

Said twenty-three year old Sam:  "I tell my friends when we're having a great time, 'You never know when you're in the middle of a great memory.'"

The next morning, I woke with the attitude I'd been looking for. The funk was gone and the biggest thing on my mind was what kind of hotel I would make my go-to when I make those trips out west. 

I opened my calendar. I envisioned the year that was coming. What the weather is like in Michigan in March, in California in August.

I planned four trips.

Two to California, to see Jacqueline.

Two to Michigan to see Courtney who has just moved there with her new husband, Ken-who-we-love.

I googled hotels and found places I will love when I visit.

I got street views of restaurants where we'll brunch,  and places where we'll walk. 

I thought about what I don't know now, but will have learned  in a year from now.

And mostly, I thought about what this now-gone funk taught me before it left: that inside every change is an opportunity to grow  that may not present itself any other way. 

This change in my daughter's life will change my own, the way it should, not only because of  the great memories that have yet to be made, but because I intend to be in the middle of each one.

After August

A while back, our two oldest children left for college one week apart. 

Jarring, yes. And yet, I remember thinking, I'm not upset enough.  It reminded me of when I was child and wanted to cry at a funeral because everyone else was.

July rolled into August. Suitcases filled, rooms emptied of posters and books and CDs, and while I found myself looking longer and harder at my children, I was still not weepy. Nor was I second-hand weepy around the mothers who couldn't get through a discussion about goodbye without tearing up.

I was even a tiny bit more cheerful as September came into view.  No more details, no more shopping. No more saying, "Did you," at the start of every sentence.

One brilliant green and yellow morning, I listened to the last movement of Beethoven's sixth, a piece my violist-daughter and I adore, and one I'd watched her perform the previous summer. I thought about that lilt in the beginning, the part she really loved, and wondered, where did it actually begin? I went to her room to ask her, and got halfway. In a week, I would not be able to do this.

I still remember my face getting cold, and a feeling of being hollow. And did I cry hard enough to make my best friend come over in her pajamas? Yes, I did.

As new parents write of lost identity when babies come, veteran parents write often of disorientation when babies go. What of the next relationship we ask ourselves, when we aren't yet those people we will be for each other?

For some, as drop off day looms, there is a wish to extend moments that are "special," and mixed feelings over unrealized joys, sadness over endless "lasts."There may be halting in the hallway, there may be cold faces. 

But most likely, there will be thoughts of who will we be instead of us?

I have come to understand the answer to this, and it isn't something I would have understood at all had someone tried to explain it before August.

It is this: my relationships with our four adult children, are more rewarding today than at any other time  because today, they demand more of me as a person than a parent. 

They are different people, but share a tolerant, kind view of the world which they require of those they intend to trust. I've learned from them, how it feels to want to be wrong, to step out of old thinking. I have started more than one conversation with, "Help me change my attitude about something."

I've never found it so easy to laugh at myself.

It wasn't like this when they were in high school and living at home. It was like this after August, when they began the work of becoming their adult selves. 

Until recently our daughter lived in Cleveland,  650 miles away from us. There, she directed a program which offered violin lessons to inner city children. Small children. Children who arrived tired and cranky and were more interested in my daughter's earrings than the piece upon which she tried to focus their little attention spans. 

She took me to tour the facility. When she left to take a call her boss resumed the tour, explaining the programs they offered and the value my daughter has brought to them. 

"We love her," said this man who has only known her as an adult, a kind, talented, professional woman. "She's a natural."

Later , we shopped for groceries and prepared dinner and talked in her kitchen about things we thought about, worried over, looked forward to, dreamed about. We had as much fun as two grown women can have when one is no longer – nor yet – dependent on the other. Today, we are more alike than we aren't, despite the twenty-plus years between us.  We share a mother-daughter relationship, but have adult lives in common.

My August hallway question is long behind me but I have learned this: children leave, and they travel as far as they must to become their individuated selves. But if we give each other that distance, don't try to close it, a very good thing can happen, next.

Whether they move down the street or text us from their living rooms across the country, they will reach out again. It will be for answers or approval, but as people with experiences to share, in need of comparison, in need of commonality.

The fall is coming. Parents will miss their college freshmen perhaps more than they imagined. I say, let the memories come. And as you remember the times you'll always cherish, also remember the times you wouldn't revisit for anything.

Above all, be joyous about the future, as love grows right along with you and connects you, long after August has come and gone. 



This piece has been updated. It originally appeared at Grownandflown.com in August, 2015.

A thing I learned in July about love

Here is a picture of how July spells its name
at the end of the month when it
doesn't feel confident.

It is the end of July, the 30th to be exact, which makes it the pond part of the year.  We've had the river of early and mid summer, and soon,  August, which is fifteen minutes long, will spill into the ocean of fall and all.

I feel sorry for this little end of July. It doesn't have the sizzle of the early summer or the cozy of fall. Because, well, look: 

• A lot of vacations are over.
• Staples is moving its back-to-school stuff up front.
• People are grilling, but are kind of running out of ideas.
• Summer camps will start soon, the appetizer before the school year for busy parents. 

The last week of July is like the late party-goer who put the wrong address in the GPS, or the one who comes a half hour early by accident. It's the kid who's too old to trick or treat, but too young to be a teen who's too old to trick or treat. It's a window between outside and inside, warm and cold.

In a way it's like February, the other month that sits between holiday fun on one side and languid beauty on the other like a hangover trying to wear off.

And yet, July has done me right.

In honor of people getting ready to send their kids all over the country in a month, and who are experiencing a kaleidoscope of thoughts about that, I'll share the gift that July handed me as it was getting ready to leave. 

Backstory

A few months ago, our daughter and her boyfriend, who live in Boston,  told us that before the end of the year, they would probably move to the West Coast. 

The news did not come as a surprise.  We knew she was restless and tired of spending her morning commute underground. We knew that her boyfriend wanted to go back to his West Coast roots, and that both the climate and his lovely family had turned her head.

I didn't, you know, think it would be this soon, but okay.

We are close, we see each every few weeks for coffee or brunch or shopping. We're  similar. We pretty much agree on everything.  I'll miss having her so close.

I hugged and congratulated them for reaching and acting on this great decision. I asked questions about the job outlook and where they thought they might live, and how his father reacted to being told his son would be near again.

"Oh, he's happy," said the man who has put the young girl back in my daughter's smile.    

They want this, and more than anything else, instead of anything else, I want this, too. 

I have been reminded of a nice truth these last four weeks and it is this: every time my own children have seized a chance to grow - a departure for college, a departure for the other coast - I grow with them.  

Our relationships are more rewarding today than at any other time because over and over, I am being shown that remaining close depends on my growth as a person more than my presence as a parent.  

They have taught me that closeness to an individual does not end with what you have in common, but in the willingness to discover, explore, and embrace your differences.

Embrace. 
Your.
Differences.

More than once, our kids have made me examine my heart and change it, close my mouth and accept what I can't relate to, discuss new truths, question wrong assumptions, update my views.

None of that had anything to do with how far I have to travel to share brunch with them.  

With July came a renewed understanding of what I learned the day our first child left for college and started becoming the adult I would meet next. It is this:

Love, like life itself, means being willing to let go of the known and turn to the great unknown, where lies the chance for sublime growth that cannot happen any other way.    

July has done me right.  So thank you, July. 

August, best of luck.

College parents, Godspeed. 

Love, Susan