teen-shaped hole in my house

Somehow I managed to make myself really and truly not believe that this day would ever really come. In my head, there was a calendar of the summer, and it stopped abruptly when it came to August 25th. As in, it just ended, cut off, no more daily boxes to check off, just a sort of mysterious blank. We were planning madly, with a whirlwind of shopping trips, sorting through stuff, packing up the teenager’s room, seeing if we could somehow attain her goal of getting all of her 17.5 year’s worth of valuable stuff into just one duffel bag and one backpack, to bring with her as she moved to Israel. She is doing a hesder program, so she will study for one year, and then serve in the army for two. Her plan is to stay on, do college, build a life there, so this August 25 thing loomed over us, larger than life, too big to comprehend in its insane finality, so I just opted out of really actually comprehending that it would come, and with it, she would actually, really go, and somehow, mind-bogglingly, not be here and living in my house anymore. 

The last week rolled around, and with it, a series of uncomfortably real goodbyes, and “lasts”, her last Friday night dinner with us a family, her last havdalah living here, and finally, her last Sunday. We planned to spend the day at Lake Lanier, and got a reasonably bearable Atlanta summer day. The water was brown, the sky was gray, but we had fun anyway, swimming and hanging out in the sand. She asked for a family viewing of the Princess Bride when we got home, a movie she literally has seen at least 50 times in her childhood. Bizarrely all of her young siblings sat through it without disruption or massive meltdown. I think they sensed that these days are all about their big sister and what she wants, and that is just how its gonna be. 

After her boyfriend went home that evening, she cried in my arms, and that just sent me over the edge. Suddenly the impossible 25th looked like it was actually going to be happening, and fast. The next few hours, her Abba and I helped her finish packing, taking breaks to hug and cry. I think, looking back, that there were two especially hard things going on. Leaving her boyfriend of a year, someone that she could always turn to and rely on, and striking out alone, is just a really, really tough thing to do at 17 or any age. So there was that. Moving out of her family home, where there were always people who absolutely loved and supported her, and took care of her, and again, striking out on her own, was starting to also feel pretty scary. It took everything I had to comfort her through my own tears (because honestly, seeing my strong, independent girl sob and doubt herself is one of the toughest things I’ve had to see in a while.) I think that until I saw her crying, I could hold onto my illusion that either this wasn't actually going to happen or that if it somehow did, she would be fine and happy and we would be the only sad ones. I’m actually fairly surprised at how little I was really ready for the moment. Its bizarre, but I’m finding over and over again, that until I live through whatever hard thing, I just can’t really properly stand in awe of others that have done it already. Who knew that there are millions (billions?) of parents out there that have sent their kids out of the house, and lived to tell the tale? And are now normal and functional, and dont cry into their cups of coffee all day long?? Its amazing.

Anyway, the sweetest part of the whole 2 hour tearfest, was the fact that after we finished stuffing her face-hugger stuffed animal and homemade deodorant into the last available centimeters of space in her duffel, she asked if i’d mind sleeping with her that night. i said, um, yeah, of course, since I was just glad she asked so that I wouldn't have to be that pathetic mom that asked. We cuddled under her blankets, and despite the fact that she hadn't washed her sheets in weeks (months?), a fact that would have bugged me any other day, I settled right in. We watched 3 episodes of Coupling, a british sitcom that has a friends-like vibe to it, which was funny and distracting enough to let us stop crying for a bit and relax together. Then we cuddled and talked and cried some more, finally dropping off to sleep from around 2 till 6:30. 

Then, crazily enough, there it was, the dreaded 25th. We headed to the airport, after more tearful hugs from Abba, which left me nearly unable to drive. With the help of some perfectly cheesy Atlanta country music, we managed to lighten the mood, joking and talking till we got to the check in line, where i turned to her sister and brother, and said, guys, this is the exciting part, now we can be really happy for the amazing adventures she is about to begin. Which I kind of honestly thought was a safe, happy thing to say, but it started the tears for her, which I have zero resistance to, so there we stood, two crying fools in the check in line. Red-eyed and frizzy, we checked in her (overweight, unsurprisingly) bag and the siblings took turns weighing themselves on the bag scale. We walked towards security together and she said, ok, this is it, and we all hugged one more time. Then we got on the down escalator, and as we slowly descended, watched her walk towards the security line with her gigantic backpack and brave, shaky smile. 

weanings

Tomorrow morning I will nurse my 2.5 year old for the last time. Im trying to prepare myself to be in the moment, rather than mostly asleep, early in the morning. I know and have experienced over and over again, that a child’s “lasts” generally pass unnoticed, until you suddenly look around days later, and think, huh, i guess she’s all done with THAT. So this time, this one little moment, I plan to show up. To be there, and feel it, and say goodbye to the closeness of a soft cheek nestled into me, sleepy eyes, calmed by the ritual nursing. I usually DON’T want to be there and feel the last anything, because it hurts, and pain is something I tend to avoid. 

The fact that this coming morning is also the morning where I fly with my teenager on a mother daughter trip, a 3 day spell of togetherness, cementing the fact that it is to her that I say goodbye as well - she leaves, moving out, just 13 days from now. This trip is my last fleeting moment, my grabbing of the experience of having my gorgeous, strong, gloriously free firstborn living in my home, a permanent part of my life, until she suddenly wont be anymore, 13 days from now. The thing she calls “home” will now be the thing she makes plans to visit. So our whirlwind trip will be just that, a way to settle into the utterly inescapable fact of yet another last, to savor it, to sense it in a way that I cannot at home surrounded by the others, to mourn it, and let myself move ahead. 

How perfectly perfect that this trip is the impetus for that weaning. My oldest and my youngest, conspiring to keep me awake and aware of how fragile and blindingly fast all of this is. No matter how much I’d rather turn away and not look at the blindingly bright reality set before me, this time I choose to be present with it. I’m thinking (hoping) that if I let myself really experience these lasts, with all their glory and loss, maybe it will be easier to open up to the excitement that the next stages will bring - potty training? the adventures of an adult child? who knows what all lies ahead??

B Book

Big brown bear, blue bull, beautiful baboon, blowing bubbles….the B book. A total classic in our house. I can read it backwards and forwards after having read it (mostly forwards) for the last 17-ish years. 

I didn't think there was any depth to the book that i hadn't yet experienced. So the other night, when my two year stunned me with her question, i wasn't really expecting any kind of spiritual moment from bedtime reading. 

Looking longingly at the bubbles in the illustration, she said, “Can I have those bubbles? When I go inside this book, can I have some?” At first I giggled, and then I thought: “When I go inside” - how crazy that she completely believes that it is fairly certain that at some point, she will enter into the reality of a work of fiction. What a sliding, shifting place, her reality is. She can talk sentences around everyone in her little life, but she still believes in fiction with a faith that most authors would love their readers to feel the tiniest fraction of. To her, entering inside a book is just as likely as fitting inside a teacup (something she has also tried lately.) I wish I could step inside her head for a bit and just remember what its like to feel like literally anything is possible, again. 

powderkeg summer

I think my news feed is killing me. I cannot get through a day without tears coming to my eyes, over and over and over. My two year old looks quizzically at me, asking, “Are you angry? Are you sad? I am angry also.” She assumes an exaggerated pose of anger, lip stuck out in defiance, arms crossed, head bowed. I have to laugh, and hug her, my voice still shaky for another minute till the day’s demands take over and pull me back to the present. 

I thought this was going to be a crappy summer. I knew it was. My husband left for a month for an archeological dig, I was perpetually nauseous from a surprise pregnancy that we didn’t feel quite ready for, and my oldest baby was moving to Israel at the end of the summer, for good. I wasn’t prepared, and didn’t have time to prepare, for homeschooling a kindergartener, second grader, and fifth grader this coming fall (only days away!) The deck was definitely stacked against me feeling any kind of peace.

And then they kidnapped the 3 boys. 

Since then, its been spiraling into more and more grief, the tears coming every single day for more loss, more unbearable sadness and the world’s condemnations of a nation that deeply loves life. 

So I follow every moment of it feverishly, and in those moments of tears, feeling like my own personal troubles are tiny, petty, nothing. And then I’m yanked back into daily reality and back to my own worries, snapping at my husband, my children, feeling the weight of exhaustion crush me and make me reactive and un-thoughtful, in a way that i haven’t been in quite some time. 

My two year old and five year old sit on either side of me with books in hand for me to read, and then fight each other over whose turn it is to be read to first. My two year old swings her hardcover copy of The Pigeon Wants to Drive a Bus and slams me on the head. I am immediately furious at the pain, at the unfairness and hopelessness of trying to do something nice for them and feeling like theres no way to win, no way to have it go smoothly, peacefully. It just makes no sense to me, this fight of theirs. I blindly, furiously, grab the two year old and put her in her room, wailing, and slam the door. 

There was a day once where I would have never dreamed of yelling at a two year old. Two? Barely verbal, minimal impulse control, raging passions and emotions, just a hint, a whisper of the civilization that will take years yet to fully emerge. Yelling? Physically handling them with fury etched in every muscle, every line of my face? I feel sick immediately after doing it. 

Is this what it is to be ruled by your raging, swirling, unmanageable emotions? Is this in some tiny way like what Israel’s enemies are feeling? Is it calculated and thought out, a philosophy of absolute hatred and murder, or is it just blind, unthinking rage? 

This way no one wins. Deep breaths. Vague glimmerings of memory that there has to be a better way. I remember reading Maria Montessori’s On Peace and Education years and years ago when I was doing my masters degree. “Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.” (And sometimes not even that apparently.) 

So I try to inhale consciously. Let go of a little of my anger at myself for being so damn reactive this entire summer. All we can do is keep fighting our own tiny (or not so tiny) daily battles, trying to let peace win and our roiling swirling emotions be, without owning our every move. No one said this would be an easy summer. Accept the chaos, and let the tears flow. Something tells me there will be more before this gets better.