I just returned home from a LONG day of traveling to and from Oswego, which followed a long day of driving back and forth to the beach. Alex and I moved Alyssa in, helped her unpack and decorate, made a trip to Walmart and Lowes and had dinner....then it was the part that I hate the most. It was time to leave and say Goodbye. No big deal right? She's been there for a year and done well. Still it is always hard for me to say Goodbye to loved ones, my beloved children especially! So there were a couple of tears shed...by the two of us Besio women who tend to get a little sappy sometimes....ok more than sometimes.
As if that's not bad enough, I help move Cara to her new digs in Yonkers, on Friday. I am honestly not sure, I can deal with all of this. Cara isn't moving to college housing....she has her own apartment. She is beginning her adult life now. I'm glad she is ready, because I am not sure I am.
Because I am bleary eyed with exhaustion, I am going to share the words of Beverly Beckham of the Boston Globe. She wrote a column a few years ago, which thanks to a friend, I just saw recently....and it explains my feelings perfectly. If your kids are in your house right now...go give them a hug...even if they are tiring you with talk of how awesome they are!
I was the sun, the kids
were my planets
By Beverly BeckhamAugust 27, 2006
I wasn't
wrong about their leaving. My husband kept telling me I was. That it wasn't the
end of the world when first one child, then another , and then the last packed
their bags and left for college.But it
was the end of something. ``Can you pick me up, Mom?" What's for
dinner?" ``What do you think?"I was the
sun and they were the planets. And there was life on those planets, whirling,
non stop plans and parties and friends coming and going, and ideas and dreams
and the phone ringing and doors slamming.And I got
to beam down on them. To watch. To glow.And then
they were gone, one after the other.``They'll
be back," my husband said. And he was right. They came back. But he was
wrong, too, because they came back for intervals -- not for always, not planets
anymore, making their predictable orbits, but unpredictable, like shooting
stars.Always is
what you miss. Always knowing where they are. At school. At play practice. At a
ballgame. At a friend's. Always looking at the clock mid day and anticipating
the door opening, the sigh, the smile, the laugh, the shrug. ``How was
school?" answered for years in too much detail. ``And then he said . . .
and then I said to him. . . ." Then hardly answered at all.Always,
knowing his friends.Her
favorite show.What he
had for breakfast.What she
wore to school.What he
thinks.How she
feels.My friend
Beth's twin girls left for Roger Williams yesterday. They are her fourth and
fifth children. She's been down this road three times before. You'd think it
would get easier.``I don't
know what I'm going to do without them," she has said every day for
months.And I
have said nothing, because, really, what is there to say?A chapter
ends. Another chapter begins. One door closes and another door opens. The best
thing a parent can give their child is wings. I read all these things when my
children left home and thought then what I think now: What do these words mean?Eighteen
years isn't a chapter in anyone's life. It's a whole book, and that book is ending
and what comes next is connected to, but different from, everything that has
gone before.Before
was an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Before was feeding and changing
and teaching and comforting and guiding and disciplining, everything hands -on.
Now?Now the
kids are young adults and on their own and the parents are on the periphery,
and it's not just a chapter change. It's a sea change.As for a
door closing? Would that you could close a door and forget for even a minute
your children and your love for them and your fear for them, too. And would
that they occupied just a single room in your head. But they're in every room
in your head and in your heart.As for
the wings analogy? It's sweet. But children are not birds. Parents don't let
them go and build another nest and have all new offspring next year.Saying
goodbye to your children and their childhood is much harder than all the pithy
sayings make it seem. Because that's what going to college is. It's goodbye.It's not
a death. And it's not a tragedy.But it's
not nothing, either.To grow a
child, a body changes. It needs more sleep. It rejects food it used to like. It
expands and it adapts.To let go
of a child, a body changes, too. It sighs and it cries and it feels weightless
and heavy at the same time.The drive
home alone without them is the worst. And the first few days. But then it gets
better. The kids call, come home, bring their friends, fill the house with
their energy again.Life does
go on.``Can you
give me a ride to the mall?" ``Mom, make him stop!" I don't miss this
part of parenting, playing chauffeur and referee. But I miss them, still, all
these years later, the children they were, at the dinner table, beside me on
the couch, talking on the phone, sleeping in their rooms, safe, home, mine.Beverly Beckham can be reached at bbeckham@globe.com.
