GOOD MORNING???

It’s six-thirty and our plane leaves in three hours.  Here it is, the beginning of the day that is the gateway to the phase I have been dreading for years. 

Some people are wondering why am I feeling this so much more strongly than other mothers.  Why am I carrying on and mourning and banging my breast so loudly?   But the truth is I’m feeling and experiencing what tens of thousands of women feel, it’s just my way of dealing and, I guess depending on your point of view, my ability is to put into words (sometimes) that which is locked into other’s hearts.

I can’t tell you how many mothers (and a few fathers) have told me how they are despondent, depressed, and miserable, beyond miserable when their kids head off to college.

I overheard a woman in a clothing store two days ago admit to a total meltdown as her sophomore was leaving that afternoon.  Clearly it is not something where practice makes it perfect.

 I have a friend with a senior about to return to college who has been beyond sad for the last week. 

As both Lynnda and Vanessa have blogged here they are feeling “numb” and “weepy”.  We had a mom write in about how she drove around for months crying.  People say it usually takes until Thanksgiving to adjust completely.  Some never do and every good-bye comes with  its own unhappiness attached.

I just went in and had my coffee while watching her sleep – still in last night’s clothes, with phone chargers, gum wrappers, cellophane from all her opened appliances and things covering her floor. Normally I would have quietly picked it all up as I hate disorder, but instead I just sat there surrounded by the teen-age chaos that is still her. And took mental note of every misplaced object so I can recreate it in my mind when she is gone.

I’m sure that the messiness will change over the next four years, but I wanted to drink it in like every phase we have been through, fights and hugs, rooms left unkempt, lumps in bed long after the rest of the family is awake, the whole teenage Tay of it all. So I sat in her bed, surrounded by her disarray, watched her sleep and cried.

It reminded me of when she was three days old and we had just returned from the hospital. I had her on my bed – eight pounds of pink, gurgling, swaddled tomorrows.  And I remember breaking down into tears then (I cry easily) at her mere presence in my life: here was this amazing thing I was not only responsible for but that I loved in a way I never knew was possible and it was the first time in my life that a certain loneliness I had carried from childhood totally vanished. Here was my change to redo my past.  Our tomorrows were linked and I had the power to make them work., to make her happy, and in the process heal myself.  That is  a lot of pressure to put on someone whose belly button scab hasn’t fallen off yet.

  And now I watch her sleep and I know most of her tomorrows will not include me.

We will have them, she will come home, and I will continue to insist that this is her home.  I was buying her some perfume yesterday and the salesman asked me where she lived. I snapped,  “At home, here, with me! She is only going to school in Boston.”

 School is temporary; home is forever, one hopes.

But I’m too smart, and at the end of the day I know I’m only fooling myself.

She may come back here a year after college, she will come back for holidays and summers and long weekends, but her other life will always be stored in boxes ready to be shipped out for duty. And as she becomes more of an adult this home will be more of a way-station and I know that to be true as that is life.

I don’t want to be selfish and I DO WANT HER TO HAVE A LIFE and a big one.  It’s just I don’t want to lose mine with her, I don’t want to lose what we’ve had –and I am and that is just  so hard.

As my friend Maureen said to me yesterday, ”It’s never the same, but different and better.” But I’m not there yet; I have to get through the next three days of unpacking her other life, saying good-bye and adjusting to my new world order.

The last three days, much like Lynnda described at her house, have been calm and very slow; the days just seemed heavy and long. We walked around and drank iced coffee and bought things to try and make ourselves feel better as that is our mutual sport and my guess is will remain so. And I am unapologetic; we are girls together.  We got pedicures and manicures and more caffeine and matching cashmere sweaters and t-shirts.  And then our last day at our country house, a house she most likely won’t return to until next summer, we ate ice cream for lunch and sat on the bay and didn’t talk.  We’ve had dinner at her two favorite restaurants, and she has said good-bye to all her friends. I think we did it all right.

 She doesn’t cry as much as I do, she keeps it in and then gets mad and blows; it’s genetic and not from my side of the family.  There can’t be two mes in one household and I claimed the weepy role before she had a chance.

But after a blow up I won’t bother to get into as there was just too much emotion for one apartment to contain, we yelled and slammed doors and I thought good, let’s end it like much of teenagehood has been, closed doors and mixed signals and pent up rage. Let me remember our last night that way. That will make the next few months easier.

But then she came in and kissed us both and apologized and I went in and sat with her and was just quiet for a change and she then did what I’ve been waiting for: she broke down and admitted she loved her home and she loved her family and loved living with us and we would all be together and she would be the one alone.   And she loved her bed and her room and her dogs and our apartment and she really didn’t want to go, yet she did and she knew she had to and the oh-so-complex beginning of life as an adult that was a day away was very scary indeed.  And despite the four bags full of stuff sitting in the hall, she was about as ready for it as I was.

And blessedly then I changed gears on a dime and become the mom she needs, not the drama queen sucking up the oxygen, and I could rub her back and tell her she is going on a great adventure and to enjoy it and she will never get these years back and we will always be here as will her bed and her room and I will love her no matter who she becomes as an adult.  And I feel better too as I know I’m doing what I’m supposed to do and I know that is as much the truth as the sadness.

She will be home, she tells me so all the time, she even told the doorman.  I know the tactic: if  you repeat it enough it has to be true. But I think what scares me is there are kids who once they get out into the world they look back and realize how unhappy their childhood actually was.  They are so grateful to be out of it they seldom return.  Family becomes the obligatory Thanksgiving and a reluctant one week visit a year, always with the feeling “I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with that anymore.”

Breaking away from parents is necessary to find yourself and if you have had good parents and they have given you a happy and secure childhood and allowed you to enter your adult years with little criticism and respect for your choices and don’t make you feel guilty for your life moving forwards as theirs slowly winds down – if you look back and feel I was happy there, I do believe you come back.

But if you grow up and look back and feel like it was all so very different than you were led to believe and the guilt outweighs the love and the love you got was conditional, it’s the reverse OZ, and you stay as far away as possible.

It’s all I know so it’s what I fear.

But hopefully, I pray I have done it right, so I end up like my fabulous friend Janey, whose home the other night was filled with her kids who are expecting kids of their own and her mother was there and it was packed with tomorrows that she is a vital part of.

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