Nov
13
Well, it’s been a week. I mean it’s been a literal week since the Day After the Election and it’s been a week. It gets dark at, like, 3:30 now. Oregon weather looked at the news and said hey how about nonstop clouds and rain, that really seems like it’ll fit the vibe. My screen time notification actually tapped me on the shoulder and was like girl r u ok? I sat down to write this and I legitimately feel like that dotted-line emoji, like the inside of my head is mostly empty, just the sound of a heart monitor flatline echoing around with some dry-ass tumbleweeds or something, and so nothing I try to say sounds quite right but I am guessing plenty of you are with me. This has been a BUMMER.
Riley was home for the weekend. It was good to see him, this was the second visit since he moved to Portland and it was slightly less unnerving in the sense that I am getting a little bit used to him feeling like a … well, a guest? He seems to be doing well, staying busy with daily track team workouts and classes. He’s made a new friend group, he’s getting along with his roommate, he’s figured out the laundry. These are the broad strokes, anyway, which is all I get; if I’d secretly hoped our relationship would blossom via written communications the whomp-whomp reality is that he texts like a distant boyfriend who is about to dump your clingy ass.
We took him to the train station on Monday morning and it was appropriately gloomy and I should have planned more for the rest of the day because all I did was mope around wishing for do-overs. What I would give to hold that kid’s hand again, at some ideal age where he was big enough to really enjoy but not so big as to prefer his own interior world, and feel the gloriously roomy overlap of our respective Venn diagrams. But oh, there is no point in pining for impossible things.
I feel like this has been a season of uncomfortable and unwanted acceptance, over and over. Yes, the election happened the way it did. Yes, summer is long gone and even the best parts of fall and we have entered The Darkness. Yes, we’re down to one kid at home. Yes, I feel suspicious and sad/mad about half the country now and I don’t see any way out of that. Yes, I am lonely. Yes, I need to take steps to save my wellbeing and be of service and put the phone down more often because I cannot, cannot, cannot spend the next four years doomscrolling.
Surrender gets a bad rap; we think of it as weakness, a cowardly white flag. But I’m thinking of it as laying down arms in a battle that cannot be won, a fight against reality. A choice to stop resisting against what is. Giving up the idea of being able to control a certain outcome or time itself and letting myself breathe and look around at all the good things that are still here. Sweeping out the tumbleweeds and letting the light shine in to mix with the shadows.
Oct
2
Last week we dropped Riley off for college, which both was and was not as bad as I’d thought it might be. It was bolstering to see all the other parents there to help, dragging giant carts through hallways and heaving big clunky duffel bags and sweating their way up the stairs. Everyone had the same complicated expression, everyone was there to do what they could to ease the transition and then say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. It was good to see how organized the university staff was, with legitimately helpful students posted everywhere to provide directions and instructions and be on the proactive lookout for confusion. It was weirdly nice to see Riley’s name on a little bag hung on his door and inside the little bag was, in addition to Useful Paperwork, a toothbrush and toothpaste.
It was also very hard to do the last embrace and feel how we were both lingering, not wanting to let go. It was hard to smile and say I love you and you’re going to do great! instead of Wow this is terrible and I can’t believe it’s happening! It was hard to actually leave the building without him and get in the truck without him and then leave the city without him and then drive two hours south and go into our house where he is visibly not there, where his not-thereness is a thing that is less of an absence and more of a presence, a dotted-line ghost that I cannot touch or be comfortingly annoyed by or hug goodnight.
It has been a real MIXED BAG. It reminds me of early parenthood in so many ways, where both things can be true at the same time. I love this newborn beyond all reason AND I have, ha ha, completely napalmed my life! I am swimming in a sea of awe and wonder AND drowning in a pool of bone-melting anxiety! I am constantly thrilled beyond measure AND I am so incredibly bored I could barf!
Except now it is: I am so proud and he is exactly where he should be AND it feels like some critical part of me has been painfully dug out with a garden trowel. I wish he could have lived with us forever AND I am so glad to no longer be picking up his messes all day long. I feel the ache of not being able to see his face AND I feel a new peacefulness in the household. I’m so happy that he is off living his own life AND I can’t believe he’s gone, I can’t believe he’s gone.
So many of us fledgling parents are grappling with the impossibility of time and it just doesn’t emotionally compute, the truth of tiny babies turning into giant young adults. It’s why we say things like “It all went by so fast!” even though in the moment, in the years themselves, it did not. We want to bring the past back to us (selectively, of course) but we can’t and there is a part of this that feels unfair, like wait wait wait, what do you MEAN all those younger versions are only memories now and I will never get to experience them again like that EVER? What do you mean I bent my entire life around parenthood like a climbing vine and now they are LEAVING?
Well. There are other, better perspectives, of course, like the anticipation of all the future versions of them, too, and the truth that parenthood does not end, it goes on and on in all its different iterations and there are so many good moments that are yet to come — including, hopefully, a new and rewarding chapter of my own life. And tell me this, when did parenthood ever feel painless? It has been my greatest and most meaningful life’s gift, it has always been a doubt-filled and bittersweet mixed bag.
-
My product review site:
[