“Growth is the only evidence of life.” ~John Henry Newman
The date is circled on my calendar. There are but a few months left before he leaves for college.
If I look back on my life, there is one theme that repeats itself over and over again. I have never been good with change.
I cried when Wendy told Peter that she could no longer go with him. She was growing up, she said. She no longer had time to play. Wendy? No. Not me. I wanted to be Peter Pan. I wanted to stay young forever.
I cried every year when Girl Scout Camp ended, when I said goodbye to my new found friends. My heart broke when Christopher Robin left the Hundred Acre Wood.
I sobbed at my high school graduation. As I hugged friend after friend, my tear-stained face smeared with purple mascara and blue eye shadow. My heart ached. Saying goodbye to those people who had meant so much to me was more painful than anything I could have ever imagined. Although a new path awaited me, I was not ready to let go.
I didn’t pay much attention to my parents’ reactions to the change that was about to occur. So wrapped up in my own angst of ending, the anxiety of what was to come, I barely looked back in that proverbial rear view mirror to see my mother’s tears as she watched me pull away. I worked at Duke Island Park and hung out with friends and spent the summer going to the Jersey shore with my best friend Anne. I tried not to think about what was to come.
I was the oldest, the first one to go off to college and for our close knit Italian family, going off to college felt a little bit like running away. For the better part of that summer, my younger brother played on my guilt by marking the “last time” that we would do things together. “This is the last time we’ll go to the movies together,” he’d remind me. “This is the last time we’ll shop at the Grand Union, the last time we’ll go for ice cream” It was torture. I felt guilty. Even though I was doing what I had been raised from a very young age to do, I was still leaving. And when the summer ended. When it was time to say goodbye, I cried.
I walked into the homeless shelter and said hello to Iris, the wonderful white haired woman who volunteers as our receptionist. “How are you,” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“OK,” I said, lying through my teeth. The truth was, I had had another difficult morning with my soon to be high school graduate. Another morning that left me angry and crying as I maneuvered the car back home. It has become standard procedure these days.
Iris smiled. She has a kind of all knowing grandmotherly smile, the kind of smile that feels like a great big hug just when you need it. She could tell I was lying.
“He’s driving me crazy,” I told her without much prompting. “I don’t know who he is anymore. He’s distant and sullen and there’s seems to be nothing I can do or say that seems to be right. I’m mad all the time and I don’t want to be. I’m a therapist, for crying out loud, I’m supposed to understand this stuff. I know he’s pulling away."
"I know it’s normal," I tell her, "But I’m scared to death and I’m sad all the time. I want to talk to him but no matter what I say, it’s always the wrong thing and we always go away mad. He’s leaving in a few months and I don’t want to spend the whole rest of his time with us mad at one another. I just don’t want to feel angry anymore.”
Iris smiled. She is, after all, a very wise woman. I hadn’t needed to say anything at all. She knew. She’s raised kids too.
“I get it. I really do,” I tell her. “I understand what he’s doing because I did it too.” But somehow knowing didn't make it any easier.
“He’s helping you out,” she said, her blue eyes still twinkling. “He knows how much you love him, how hard it will be for you to let go. He’s just making it a little easier.”
My eyes filled with tears as I listened to the wisdom of this kind soul who had walked this path before me.
“He will be back,” she said confidently. “He will come home that first time from college and it will be good again. He will be happy to see you and all this will be a distant memory. It is the way things have to be right now. This too will pass. You’ll see.”
And somehow I knew she was right.
Sometimes, life is hard. We grow. Things change. We say goodbye.
And then, hello.
