Hugs only please

Everyone keeps telling me that my youngest is going to be easily accessible as if I don't know how close her college is to home. I'm reminded of how quick I can get to her in an emergency. How her proximity to me isn't anything to warrant the emotions I feel about her not being in my home twenty four/seven. I call bullshit.

A friend recently posted on social media an article written by a mom sending her last child off to college, and I just want to print it and hand it to every well meaning adult who spouts out what he hopes is well meaning advice. Not that I'm not known for doing the same thing. We all want to help friends, but I'm slowly learning that sometimes saying nothing and giving a hug instead goes much further.

"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," writes Beverly Beckham. "...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. ...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."

My girls have always talked to us. We use to go around the table at dinner every night and each child told us about her day. Then as they got older and dinner was grabbing something on the way to soccer practice, or play practice, or swim meets they told me their day as we traveled. To this day, as our family joke, Madison sometimes starts out her day sagas with, "You dropped me off..." because she learned early that I like details told in story form from beginning to end and her beginning always began at drop off.

This summer the girls would come home from work either together or individually and we would sit on the couch and they would regale me and one another of their day and the antics of the camp kids they supervised as counselors. We laughed. So much. And then Tom would ask them to do it all over again when he got home and we'd all laugh together. He and I don't talk much about being left behind, but I know he is feeling the loss just as hard. He spent all summer leaving work to be home by six o'clock. If you know my husband, you know that is shocking.

"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." - Beverly Beckham

I guessed at some of this as a teenager, and worry for my own mother kept me at home attending our hometown college. It was a burden I shouldered early on, making the choice because of some small debt I felt I owed or for the love of a parent I felt wouldn't handle it well. We discussed this my mother and I many years later, and we both had regrets, but now, now I get it on an even playing field. It's also why I agreed with my youngest for her to live on campus despite her choice of attending our "hometown" college. I wanted to acknowledge her wings as I pushed her out of the nest.

"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." - Beverly Beckham

It's not nothing either. Having never experienced this, I hadn't a clue. I've apologized to many friends and family who paved this way first because I should have just sent or given hugs instead of my two cents. Each experience is of course different, but it certainly isn't nothing. So I breathe and cry if I want or make jokes or write.

"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."- Beverly Beckham

I've always looked toward the future despite growing up in a family that revered the past. Even now I think how leaving for college is a precursor to moving away, getting married, having kids. I regret not taking more time to live in the moment, to enjoy what I had in front of me instead of worrying about what was next. This is where I change that, to allow myself to grieve this loss, to discover the me without two girls at home, and to find a balance.

They will return, for holidays, for summers, to visit. Madison has called us this week to give updates on her RA training, to report a computer issue, and to assure us she is sleeping in an air conditioned building. Darcy will do the same. The calls may be fleeting but they will be there, and we will cling to that and yes, the possible weekend visits from the youngest only an hour away.