Tonight, after 20 years of parenting, my creativity evaporated, so I just said:
“What did you learn today?”
And then I heard a whole lot about Bangladesh.
Category: Round Two
when the end is near…
There was the afternoon
when i slid down the wall
in the hallway
in front of the bookshelf
and dozed there
with a lap full of journals;
until voices lifted my gaze
out the window
toward the hill,
where Aidan,
tall and lanky,
like a teenager,
used a plastic bat
to hit snowballs to his friend.
Unlike his older brother,
Aidan has lulled me,
with his child-like ways,
into the fantasy
that “we”
will always
be.
(Emily was right…
How softly summer shuts, without the creaking of a door.)
Mommy Graduation
Earlier this month I experienced mounting anxiety as my youngest approached graduation; but not because he wasn’t ready.
It was me.
I’ve devoted a lifetime to children, and not just the past 21 years to my boys and their school; but the decade before that to the children in my classroom, and even the decades before that, to my seven younger siblings.
Underneath the separation anxiety is
GRIEF,
and underneath that,
a deeper truth:
I AM READY!
I’ve been ready.
But the readiness doesn’t diminish the loss.
The vacuum.
Where there once was Everything.
Last night, he graduated.
I graduated.
(From the last of them.)
My baby will leave the hill that shaped our lives together,
and head to town,
to the high school,
where his father teaches.
And me?
How do I feel?
That’s what people ask, expecting
sorrow.
I barely slept.
I tossed and turned and fretted.
It may have been the champagne,
but I kept thinking of bubbles
and all things
that float…
up.
Finally, my mind settled in on
balloons,
and then to a single
hot
air
balloon,
and the way,
SHE RISES,
as she lightens
the
load.
The Empty Nest Diary 