The Heron

I always look for ducks in the creek near our house. There are almost never ducks, but I look anyway. 

On the first day of school I walked Stella across the bridge. It had rained heavily the day before, and the creek was high. "Maybe we'll see a duck!" I said. 

Instead there was a heron: blue-gray with implausibly slender legs, taller than Stella. It waded gracefully toward us, unruffled by our gasps of surprise. We'd never seen anything like it.

I was brimful of wistfulness that morning. Pete is in fifth grade this year, and so he takes the junior high bus instead of walking with Stella. But you guys, I was JUST blogging about Pete starting kindergarten. That post is from, like, two weeks ago. The older boy who talked all summer about switching schools had headed out with his chin up, leaving me proud and worried and...wistful. And Alex-- I miss him every day. If I think too much about it my eyes well up: he's gone. Gone.

It sounds a little wacky to say that my son's successful transition to college feels like a loss. So I will say it quietly, just between you and me and the internet: it feels like a loss. This is my job here at the end of my second decade of motherhood, to welcome the losses as my children head out into the world.

Recently Calah Alexander posted about the adjustment to life after her first baby's arrival. I found her post very evocative, because it was a tough adjustment for me as well. That new little person took up about 80% of the available real estate in my brain. I would remember something from five years earlier and catch myself thinking, "But what did I do with Alex while I was backpacking / singing in the choir / taking that final exam?" My mom pals had all seemed to make the adjustment more smoothly, but my mental gears clunked audibly as they tried to process these enormous truths: here is a little boy who did not exist a year ago. My world is different forever because he is here, and he needs me.

Now my world is different because he is not here, and he only needs me occasionally.

When you're in the thick of little-kid needs, you can't imagine that it will ever be different, really. You know people whose children have grown up and moved out, but it's hard to envision your particular children outgrowing Frog and Toad or goldfish crackers or peeing on the floor or eventually your home. (I do not actually miss the peeing on the floor part. I'm wistful, but I'm not that wistful.) You get occasional glimpses of where they're heading, like those elusive ducks in the creek nearby. But the reality, I think, is almost certain to be surprising-- like the enormous heron.

That morning I walked Stella to the school and kissed her goodbye. I ambled back toward home. When I stopped on the bridge the heron was still there. But as I stood there, he spread his great wings. And as I watched with an ache in my heart, he flew away.