Me. My wife. A cat or two.
* * * * * *
Well, I'm on the other side of it and I don't know what to think.
Thirty-eight years ago, I bid my parents farewell and set off for college. The urge to leave, to find my future, to decide who and what I would be was strong. The thought of staying with my parents and working a full time job right after high school was a bleak one. I was ready to go.
The college I attended was two states away, so there were no regular visits with family. I went home for holidays, of course, but only one summer - the one after my freshman year. Every other summer, I stayed at the school for I had a job.
Sometimes more than one.
After college was done, I joined the Army. In 1987, I returned to my hometown with a wife and ten years worth of living away from where I was raised.
* * * * * *
My oldest son left for college today.
He has already lived away from home. A couple years ago, he moved into an apartment thirty or so miles away. He felt it was time to leave and there was a job which required a longer commute if he'd stayed home.
I was all for it. After all, it was time for him to leave, to find his future, to decide who and what he would be and he'd only be just a few minutes from my parents' house. The possibilities for seeing him occasionally were good, though I didn't want to overdo that. After all, he needed his adult space.
After a year of living on his own, he returned home. He had changed jobs and his new work was about fifteen miles to the north of us. So, it made sense for him to bring all his stuff back and stay with us until he figured out what he would do with regards to living space.
We didn't see him often, maybe once a week. He'd usually get home from work in the wee hours, so I only saw a closed bedroom door when I got up in the morning. Sometimes he'd stay with a friend.
But he was still here and that was really all that mattered.
Now he's gone.
* * * * * *
My youngest son moved out in January of this year, married in April and lives with his wife about fifteen miles away. They have been house searching and, for all intents and purposes, have found a place three towns over.
Probably about twice as far away as they are now. A not insurmountable distance, of course, but there's more geography between us than there had been. The quick jaunt to their apartment is being replaced with a half hour drive.
I know distance. Know it well.
The further away, the less likely the trip will be made with any frequency.
* * * * * *
Though I've grown used to my youngest being on his own, I've also grown used to having my oldest around, if not in body then at least in spirit.
He left for college today. The school is a little over two hours away.
That distance isn't insurmountable, but I know distance and likelihoods.
I brought my wife to Maine from the south. When we married, her parents were living in Hialeah, Florida. Eventually, they moved back to their homeland in North Carolina. Half a country closer than they had been, it was still a thousand miles away from us.
We saw them once a year.
I know distance.
* * * * * *
I walk around our house and wonder how my sons remember their childhoods, their home. Did it leave a positive stain on their psyches? Do their memories of it resonate?
Perhaps not as much as I would like.
When I was in my twenties, everything was about now and next, certainly not then. Those recollections would not come for another thirty years.
Life gets so busy. Reflection becomes something of an unnecessary luxury when one is building a world with a growing family. There is so much to be submersed in that roots end up taking a rear seat in the theater of living.
* * * * * *
I go to my parents' house these days and it is so grandparenty there. Much like I remember when I visited my own grandparents. So many tchotchkes and trinkets and pictures. And the fragrance, oh the fragrance. Some people's homes just smell old. You know what I'm talking about.
It's an indefinable odor that is laden with decades of history and memory. A little musty, maybe. A little hairsprayie. Maybe some Old Spice. But mostly just the smell of age.
And I have to wonder if our home is like that or will become like that? Is that one of the undeniable truths of life - that our homes will start to reek of grandparentness?
That's in the future right now, I suppose, as neither of my sons are parents.
* * * * * *
In September of 2007, I wrote a poem. My sons would've been around 11-13 years old at the time. It goes like this:
A Father's Lament
They first started walking
On little wobbly legs
(Waving wild their chubby arms
Like a chicken laying eggs).
And they came to me with smiles
Stretched o'er their drooly chins.
Big proud eyes alight with glee -
They've not stopped walking since.
They just keep walking away;
I wouldn't stop them if I could.
But I want to, yeah I want to,
To keep them here for good.
The little legs are longer now,
Stronger - pushing hard.
Running wild to find the keys
To leave the house, escape the yard.
I manage still to reign them in
And trim their wings unbound
But the hill they're on goes up
While the hill I'm on goes down.
Will come a day they walk too fast
And far that I'll lose sight.
Expected, but not wanted -
It is their life, it is their right.
They just keep walking away;
I wouldn't stop them if I could.
But I want to, yeah I want to,
To keep them here for good.
I suppose that sentiment hasn't changed and might actually be stronger now.
My wife and I will get used to being empty nesters for that is the human condition. We grow used to situations. But adapting won't replace the gladness and sadness we feel at our kids moving on.
We have come full circle.
Me. My wife. A cat or two.
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