Cole leaves a week from tomorrow.
This interim space is more burdensome than I emotionally budgeted for.
I actually did not budget anything past his grad party, to be honest.
Waiting for the final hugs and tears and farewells, not just from me...but Tim, Lily, Owen and break-my-heart...Whitney...well, it’s just the worst. Tim told the kids to make sure they will be home this Friday for our ‘last family dinner.’ Our family is forever changing and I kind of hate the process. It reminds me of how unnatural having a natural childbirth actually felt.
Nonetheless, it’s all good and proper and right.
When our family friends said their goodbyes at the grad party, I witnessed the drastic difference between the moms and dads. The Dads, full of exhortations and words of valor and encouragement, hurrahed a cheery farewell. The mothers became uncharacteristically quiet with contemplative stares, I could feel their sympathies in the silence.
As a mom, this whole letting your sons leave and cleave thing feels unfair, partisan-like... not in our favor. I have been running this race for ages, carrying and pouring my heart and life into Cole for 18 years plus 10 months, since he refused to be born. Then BOOM…(sidebar: yes, it feels totally like that, you don’t see this coming. BOOM.) Sir Time comes and a little too rudely shoves me off the track, as Cole continues onward. I watch him pick up the pace, carry more weight, and contemplate these new and other options. All of those years spent protecting and molding him are cord-cuttingly over. D.o.n.e...done. There’s no press conference or medal, it’s just a quiet finish off to the side. All I hear in the background is my Siri lady in her British accent… ‘re-calibrating...re-calibrating.’ I’m still. It all feels so jarringly abrupt, if not slightly unfair.
But, as a friend reminded me...
It’s good and proper and right.
It’s exciting.
It’s what we have been praying for. It is time for Cole to start his own adventure, to start building towards his own life’s work, and one day future family. He’s an arrow...always has been, always will be, regardless of how brilliantly impossible it is for me to remember that. These arrows are not our own. They are the Fathers, not on loan, but entrusted, a divine partnership, closer than our own skin, in spite of our own failures in raising them.
When I look at my son, I see a newborn swaddled in a cotton hospital blanket with a wide mouth and gilded hair. I see a two year old with squishy cheeks cuddled in my arm every hour before his afternoon pretend nap. I see a skinny kid running cross country, a smart little whip with an unending supply of energy. I see a complicated, justice seeking teen, pouring over the book of Job, a well-deep soul, the only one in our family with the ability to appreciate music as art. And now I see an 18 year old with strong muscles, an older handsomeness, smiling a nervous and confident smile, eyes bright, ready to jump.
All that is left to do now is to hug him one long, last time as my bird, to tell him that I believe in him, that I am proud of him, and whisper-choke an ‘I love you, Colie.’ I will watch him drive away with Tim, never to return the same. I will hope that we were enough. I will be equally grateful, relieved, and undone. I will watch him fly away from our nest, and hope that he remembers the time in his life when we were his home, and he was our bird.