One month in...

What matters most

Almost a month has passed since we dropped Z off at college. September 1st. He has called every week, we have seen him twice. The tears have lessened, the clutching feeling around my heart loosened, the ache of missing him softened. He has a sense of ownership in all aspects of college life—from getting himself to meals and class, meeting friends, writing for the school’s paper, organizing a group to teach and play a tabletop role-playing game (RPG)—he is embracing this new stage of life. The enthusiasm, eagerness, the zeal for all of it fills in the emptiness and space he has left behind. I check his location far less frequently, days have passed this week when I didn’t check at all. I don’t worry about him making it to that 8 am calculus class. He has done it 9/10 times, with a close call and a full-on sleeping through the alarm incident. He emailed the professor immediately upon waking up and figured it all out. When he told me about this, what he was clearly communicating to me: I’ve got this, Mom. (Of course, those of you who know Z know he never calls me Mom…)

Images of childhood

I have gone into his room at home, sat on his bed, looked around at what he left behind. When we moved into this house, he had just turned one. He didn’t really spend much time in this bedroom until his brother, L, arrived 18 months later. I see evidence of that boy all around me. The mural on the wall, painted lovingly by my mom, his grandmother, depicting Max in his boat sailing out to Where the Wild Things Are. The books that range from Harry Potter to Peanuts comic books to The City of Ember, recommended by his third grade teacher when things were hard for him at school, to Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which he read to gain some insight on how we got to the 2016 election to his more recent enthusiasm for Manga. The Lego sets, built from the time he was old enough not to eat the Legos up through his last years in high school. He built city scapes and a Volkswagen Beetle, the Ghostbuster’s car, the Back to the Future car, some Star Wars battleships. Graduation cards from family and friends, photos from prom and grad night, notebooks full of notes on the RPG he played for years with his high school friends. The quilt with the birth announcement I cross stitched while pregnant that has kept him warm since he was two years old.

He is everywhere here.

And yet,

not.

Except when playing games with his friends, Z was not a loud teenager. He didn’t take over spaces or leave evidence of his presence all over the house. L’s clothing is in every room, on every surface, under every couch. His seltzer cans and water glasses, bowls of yogurt or ice cream leave a food trail that if you follow, may lead to the boy himself. But Z did not take up much space. He was a steady, quiet presence in the house. When it wasn’t build season for Robotics or his job didn’t require dinner hours, he almost always ate with us. At all times of day and night, he would come downstairs and make himself a pizza. He would pace circles around the kitchen island if he was talking to one of us or make a larger loop through the kitchen, dining room, and living room if he was watching a video. And though I have adjusted—faster, easier than I anticipated—I still miss him every single day. Probably, I always will.

I realize that the distance invites a certain self evaluation for me. And, it also will give Z the space to evaluate, consider, critique, process what it has been to be my child. How my parenting shaped, impacted, effected him. I welcome this. I encourage it. I know well that even at my best, I have not been all he needs. No parent is. As the first child, he had to endure more of my mistakes. The author, Anna Quindlen, in writing about the birth of her second child said:

One teaches me as we go along, and the other inevitably reaps the benefits of that education. Each child has a different mother—not better, not worse, just different.

I want Z to spend the time thinking about what worked, what didn’t, what he wished he had had, what he is grateful he did get. If he feels hurt or let down or angry or upset by choices I made or didn’t make, I want to know those things. I want to give him the chance to move on from those things, to make things better. This is how we improve our relationships. How we can be more fully ourselves. If he chooses to have children, they will benefit from him taking inventory of what he wants to carry on and what he wants to leave behind. It is amazing to me when people don’t want their children to do this. When adults somehow feel it is not okay to look back in this way. Why wouldn’t we? How else do we learn? Yes, it may be painful. I put all of myself into raising these boys. And yet, I know without doubt that I came up short. Because humans always do.

More than anything, I hope he knows how much he matters to me. That as cliche as it sounds, he and his brothers are the world to me.

Who'd have known a little boy
Could teach me to believe in joy

~John Gorka

All photos were taken by the exceptional Dana Giuliana, unless otherwise noted.