Step into the void

Mom and I are chatting over lunch, like we do. It seems my overwhelming pride for my son—who graduates in June and will be attending San Francisco State University in the fall—simultaneously explodes in my chest and is tempered by my realization of the passage of time. Or, maybe just my acknowledgment of it.

I feel guilty. Normally, I’m predisposed to thinking that guilt is a useless emotion. When others are awash in it, my advice is that they rectify the situation, or release their attachment to it. Either way, move on. Guilt in and of itself is a hot mess that keeps people from acting. So, drop the guilt and act.

Except, of course, it’s ME we’re talking about here and no matter how hard I try to give up my guilt fetish it seems I manage find new ways to revel in it.

What’s got me in a choke hold is that, lately, I can’t stop thinking about when my son was about a week old; I’d looked at this tiny, trusting little human being and—despite the stitches and the achy lady parts?—still wonder when his real mom was going to come and get him. And then I would remember I was his real mom, and that awesome job would evermore be left to me.

Pause.

Really? A mom? I was a mom? How could it be? I mean, I was barely 23-years-old. People that young shouldn’t be allowed to breed let alone take on the responsibility of ensuring that tiny people live and thrive and grow into much bigger ones.

But the one thing that sated me then, as I made the emotional transition from self-absorbed-it’s-all-about-me young woman to never-again-the-center-of-my-own-Universe mom, was the thought that in 18 years, I’d be done. My shift would be over and I could clock out. This baby—my baby—would have grown into a young adult and go seek his fortune and I could go back to being the sun in my own solar system. YAY me!

Fast forward 18 years, to me sitting in a café with my mother with a look of complete consternation. All I can think, and what I finally give voice to, is that I totally did this to myself. I wished for it, actually willed it to happen before I knew what I was doing and now there was no way I could ever take it back—because it was ALREADY HAPPENING.

When I confess my horrendousness to my mom, she smiles that I-know-what-you-mean smile. “There’s something about the first child and the last child making those big steps in the world,” she says. “Because as you watch those two take their big steps, you’re also taking two huge, emotional steps, as well. Watching that first little bird leave the nest comes with the acknowledgment that his leaving is necessary. He has to go out into the world and live his own life. And the reality that they really do leave, and that your family dynamics will change, is that first step toward the reality that they all go.

“And then when the last one goes…” she pauses and we both nod, not wanting to say or hear anything about “empty nests” and “chapters closing” and “the passage of time,” et al. “And it’s not that you feel any differently about the middle ones. Not at all—you still feel that pull. The contrast is that, with the other two, your feelings mark the beginning and the end of that passage in your life.”

I don’t know why, but I suddenly don’t feel guilty anymore. A little sad, sure, but somewhere in our conversation I forgave myself for being young and fearful of stepping into the unknown. That unknown has been my comfortable, well-worn world for many years now. I drink my tea and sigh, and acknowledge that I’m not that young woman anymore. But I’m about to leap into the void again.