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Among Friends |
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| Wings and roots I see them coming and pretend to be engrossed in the post-office bulletin board or garage-sale flyers at the general store. They stop to talk anyway. "So, have you heard from him (or her)?" I ask brightly, settling in for 15 minutes of teary updates from a parent experiencing separation anxiety in the absence of a child who has flown the nest. "How did it go by so fast?" one mother asked, admitting she was still having a hard time. It had been three weeks since she'd left her only child in his college dorm room. Talking about it sent tears sliding down her cheeks. "One minute he was in pre-school, and now he's in film school. When I look back on the last 18 years, they're a blur, a fast-forward movie." It wasn't that my friend didn't want her son to grow up to pursue his dreams. It's that he left too soon -- 30 or 40 years too soon. "I tried three times to walk away, but I kept coming back to hug him," said the silver-haired mom whose "baby" is now a 6-foot-2 champion surfer. "When I got in the rental car, I sobbed all the way to the airport. When is this going to stop?" Soon, I hope, though my mother said it never quite did. Every time I flew home, the first thing mom asked, aside from "What in the world did you do to your hair?" was "How long can you stay?" My answer was never long enough. She wanted me back in my bedroom, the one she decorated with the French provincial twin bed, lavender-sprigged wallpaper and apple-green paint when I went away to summer camp when I was 15. It was exactly the same 19 years later when my parents sold the split-level house where I grew up. When I last saw my mother, she was wearing the same grimace and shedding the same tears as my bereft friend. Among her final words to her 40-something daughter were, "Can't you stay longer?" My husband and I feel the same way about local kids we've mentored and loved since he was their sixth- and eighth-grade teacher and baseball coach. When "the kids" are around, our lives are lively. They know we keep an "open door" house. The spare refrigerator is stocked with soda and water, the cookie jar is full, and we usually drop whatever we're doing to listen to them. Being remembered by somebody else's children is one of the greatest gifts an adult can get. This summer, two strapping brothers and their lifelong sidekick used machetes and muscle to clear away our tangle of vines, tinder-dry brush and invasive species trees. The best part of our day was calling out "Lunch!" and hearing their version of the state of the world (they don't think it's very good) as they ate us out of house and home. Despite our best efforts, we ran out of work to keep them around. Now, one brother stays behind to finish high school as the other two head off to the same college. Their mothers -- longtime friends and each other's babysitter -- will escort them to school, then take a two-week road trip together. "We'll probably cry all the way down the California coast," said one. Mothers aren't the only melancholy empty nesters. One dad keeps his cell phone at the ready to answer daily phone calls from a daughter half an ocean away. "Just 99 days 'til Christmas," he said cheerfully. "I can't wait." Then he adds, doubtfully, "She sounds like she's doing fine, though." Of course she is. He gave her roots before she spread her wings. No matter where she flies, she'll find her way home. |
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