I’ve already done this. It was supposed to be easier this time.
Newsflash: it doesn’t get easier.
Three years ago, I sent my firstborn—my only daughter—to college. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I felt gutted. Like I’d lost a limb. Unhealthy perspective? I suppose. And I kept telling myself all the things. She’s ready, she’s been ready forever. This was always the goal. Roots and wings. All of it was true. My original platitude was, “The only thing worse than her going would be her staying.” People laugh when I say that, imagining I am referring to mother/daughter angst, snarky attitudes, the soiling of the nest . . . but I wasn’t. She wasn’t that daughter, the one with the attitude and eye rolls. The rebellious know-it-all all. She wasn’t the teenager I had been to my mother (thank God!) and I don’t think I was the mother my mother was to my teenage self (thank God again, but also . . . thank you, Mama!).
No, what I meant by “the only thing worse than her going would be staying” is that I didn’t want her to settle for a life in a place where she had never really belonged. Don’t get me wrong, our small town was good to her, to all of us, but it was probably clear to everyone she longed for something else. Not better, just else. So the worst thing would have been for her to stay. So, she went. And she grew and thrived and I loosened my controlling grip (a little) and we are both better for it and we are growing into our adult relationship and it’s lovely.
But here we go again. Baby number two. My firstborn son. The boy I needed but never thought I wanted. What I mean is I wanted girls—I was scared to death of raising teenage boys. They are wild and loud and rough and I wouldn’t know how to relate. What I wanted was a chance to parent myself in a way I had longed for. In a way, I didn’t think I knew what to do with a boy.
But as they say: you don’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. And my son is just what I needed. He’s none of the things I feared (well rarely). He is sturdy and steady. A voice of reason in my sometimes (often?) unreasonable response to the world. Unlike his sister, he kind of liked his high school experience. Sports, friends, a nice girlfriend. Really sort of great. And while I still wouldn’t want him to choose to stay without seeing what else there is out there, he’s much more suited to it than she was. So my comfort that she was going out to “find her tribe” doesn’t feel as urgent for him.
Still, he is going. One week from tomorrow. He is excited and we are excited for him and I believe it’s going to be good. He’s ready, roots and wings. All of it is true again. But that baby boy I didn’t know I could love as much as any girl has been one of my greatest gifts. Another limb about to be ripped from my body, a piece of my heart, my identity, and a joy in our home will be missing.
My daughter says I am “friends with my feelings” more than some people. I think about how I feel, why I feel, what I feel, what to do with what I feel, how to change what I feel, and talk about what it all means and then reassess. Healthy rumination? Nope. But it’s who I’ve been forever. Maybe I’ll work on that in my empty nest days. I’ll think about it.
So, I’ve worried about this for years. Lost countless nights of sleep. Yet here we are. So over the next few weeks, I am prepared to feel huge sadness, great anxiety, and be a bit of an emotional wreck, I’m also holding tight to the fact that my limb that felt like it had been severed when my daughter left seems to have grown back stronger than ever. My heart still beats in my chest with a different but connected love for her.
It’s all one life. This is a new chapter—maybe a whole new book in the series. But sometimes the second book picks up where the story left off. Sometimes it’s a cliffhanger. But always, it takes us deeper into the characters, life, and the story. So while I always hate closing the book, sometimes the end just makes way for a new beginning.
P.S It’s not even over for me! I have ANOTHER one, my youngest. Another son who is my baby in every stereotypical and true sense of the word. He has continued to teach me about raising boys. He is the most like me of any of my children. Strong-willed but soft and sweet. I see my soul mirrored in him every day (God bless him!). He has two years of his parents all to himself and he will love that. But oh, how he will miss his brother! They are thick as thieves. Close as any siblings I’ve known (I was an only child and longed for brothers or sisters and my greatest accomplishment in life has been these three and their love for each other). I’m two years from that empty nest, you know the one where I’ll work on myself and fix all the things my children will have to work out in their own therapy someday. So in two years, I’ll be ready for the next book. Or a spin-off series, where I become the focus of the story. Maybe it will be a bestseller. . .
by Heather McGuire 
by Ranae Aspen 
