Category: College

Posted in College, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

Letting go like a dream, or labor, or swimming under water

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

klimt-mother-and-childThough she could probably count the times she’d cried as an adult, she found herself randomly weeping throughout the entire college orientation weekend.

Shit, she thought. What did I get myself into?

She thought she was ahead of the game of loss given her advance work on the blog and the book entitled, The Empty(ing) Nest Diary (END). But there seemed to be no escaping any of it. It was a lot like labor in this way. Unpredictable. Chaotic. Tender. Remarkable. Excruciating.

By the second day, she began to feel that she was caught up in a bad dream. Her son’s impending absence was so thick around her heart, that she felt the need to hug him, but she couldn’t find him—not in the bookstore, or the meal tent, or in the lounge or  in the residence halls.

Once or twice she thought she spied him among the crowds, and she even ran toward him, only to discover that it was another handsome young man who did not belong to her.

When she crossed paths with his friends,  she had to restrain herself from embracing them, though she did over eagerly greet them with a desperate joy.

“Have you seen Lloyd?”she’d ask, trying be casual, as if she was just making conversation, not letting on that in fact she was caught in a nightmare where her son was just around the corner, but she’d never find him. Again.

When she finally did stumble upon him, the real him, on a tour, she hugged him. In public. In front of strangers. He didn’t seem to mind. Too much.

They would meet for lunch. She placed herself at the first table in the tent, facing the entrance so that she wouldn’t miss him; and still she looked behind herself every 10 minutes just in case she’d been distracted and missed him rushing by.

But he did eventually arrive, and even returned to her table once he found some lunch. It was a light meal and quick conversation and then he was off again with his friends.

Suddenly she realized that this is how it would be.

He would breeze in and breeze out of her days like breath after a long time underwater, and she would be both refreshed and emptied in the space she created inside to receive him.

She resented this. Because of her father.

Posted in College, Fragile Life, Insight, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

Losing my familiar

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

empty nestWhat is it about 3:30 in the morning?

Is it me or do others find themselves wide-eyed at the wrong time too?

Last night I woke in an unfamiliar place. (Inside and out.)

There I was, in someone else’s home, in some else’s bed, in someone else’s suburban neighborhood, outside of someone else’s city… only it was my son’s city now too.

We were there for parent weekend; we had been thrilled to come; THRILLED; but after we dropped my son back at the dorms that first night, everything felt wrong.

At 3:45 am, I ached for my own bed, in my own home, on my own dirt road, in my own rural community 200 miles away; but in the dark of the night I realized that it had become a stranger too.

My entire life had.

At 4:00 am, I considered re-arranging my bedroom once home so that my bed was facing south again; but even in my imagination, I knew it wouldn’t be enough.

I had lost my familiar.

There is something to mothering that steeps one in the familiar, in home, in the timelessness of connection and belonging.

As a child myself, I moved more than a dozen times so I never fully experienced this deep hold until my body became my baby’s.

Once he was beside me, I no longer relied on the company of my blankie which traveled across the country, and the sea, to be my home.

At 4:20 am, I considered the stretch of life ahead of me–without my son–and decided that it might be time to bring my blankie back to bed.

(ps. it’s actually 2 blankies and a stuffed puppy)

(And here’s a tune for all those seeking “home”

Posted in College, Insight, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, Teens, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

Wild Inside

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)
Fine-Art-Pacific-Beach-Belmont-Park-Merry-Go-Round-Roller-Coaster-HDR
Parenting… Carousel or Roller Coaster? (photo: Scott Campbell)

Remember when you’d trip over yourselves
to be the first one up the stairs
to see the baby’s face
when she woke?

Or years later,
on pick up day
at overnight camp
when you and your husband
shoved each other out of the way?

Tomorrow is a day like that.

It’s been 6 weeks
since we left our son
at college.

On that day, we played it cool.

But tomorrow,
No way.

I want to be the first one to feel his skin against mine,
and I don’t care if I look foolish.

This is how it is.

So many hours,
of so many days,
over so many weeks,
through so many months,
of count-ed years,
in abject Mundanity…

Are
really
the
most
Wild
Ride
of
Your
Life.