Ready or Not...

I am not ready for all the changes that have come upon me lately. I'm not saying they're bad things. They're not. They're natural and, for the most part, predictable in the course of one's life as parent. But so far I've only been at arm's length from the stark realities that come at rapid-fire pace as being the mother of three young adult children. I thought that having three kids in four years was hard when they were little. Thank the Lord I could not see into the depth of pain in the future.

I seldom feel needed. I rarely feel considered in anyone's plans. Usually I just feel both invisible and lost, as if I'm wandering around in a thick fog with laryngitis saying, "Hello? Can anybody hear me? Do you see me? Hey, did you catch that I made plans and expected that you'd be part of them? Hello?" And then it's as if a dial tone is all I hear in the fog. But instead of the dial tone saying, "Bzzz," it answers with,"Uh, yeah, I'm going out tonight. I'll be back late, 12:30, 1:00 maybe." Or it says, "I won't be here this weekend." Or, "By the way, I'm moving out in a few weeks. Thought I'd give you and Dad a head's up."

They say "don't blink or you'll miss it." When did I blink? There haven't been enough sunrises and sunsets yet. There haven't been enough hugs and kisses. There haven't been enough kind words and certainly not enough apologies. There haven't been enough car rides, long talks, or walks in the park. I am aching with an unquenchable ache to do it all again, do it better, be the mom I wanted to be, the mom I pictured being when I was carrying them but the mom who goes to bed almost every night with guilt over what she said, what she should have said, how she should have listened better. The mom who looks at herself in the mirror and says, "Who are you and what is your purpose anyway?"

I've got to find a new identity because being "Mom" is too painful right now. I don't have the same amount of control and they aren't exactly coming to me for advice. I feel rejected and abandoned. I am glad they have chosen good paths with God, good friends, higher education, jobs. I remember wanting the same freedom from my parents at that age that our kids want from us. And, come to think of it, I don't recall considering that my parents had feelings when I was 18, 19, 20. I thought they wanted me gone as much as I wanted to be gone. Never did it occur to me how they might have been having trouble adjusting to a lighter nest quickly, since my older sister and I left home , one right after the other. I never had a sit-down, let's talk-this-over conversation about my decision to ask how they felt. It was all about how I wanted my own place, was ready to work hard enough to pay for everything myself. Maybe my mom was just more stoic or mature or something. I don't remember that she cried, don't remember her begging me come home for meals or visits. Maybe she did. Or maybe she didn't allow herself to feel used that way. I don't think they cared to see my first apartment, don't know they were ever in it, as a matter of fact. Maybe it was too painful, especially since it was so small that if you rolled over in bed you could wash your hands, or if you rolled the other way, you could open the front door.

I think, then, that I've been taken off guard. Unprepared for this phase of life. Where are my friends who are going through this? Some of them are around, but I don't see grief and ache. Do we just not talk about these milestones the way we used to talk about potty-training and getting them to sleep through the night?

I think that not seeing my own mother struggle with our leaving home has handicapped me. I am not saying this as a blame; I'm saying that I have taken so many unconscious cues about how to handle children's phases from my mom. She guided me through nursing the children, diapering them, getting them to eat a variety of foods, watching for medical care I might have missed, disciplining them (though, thankfully, she kept a far distance on that one), educating them. But oh.my.word. Guiding me in how to let them go? I am floundering. Floundering! There aren't college courses on this, are there? If so, where do I sign up and I don't care if I have to pay a lot for it (just tell me where the tutors are)

I have only had one teaching on the subject, but didn't find it particularly helpful. Mabye because it was given by a dad, and I can't even get my husband to tell me how he's feeling. So I think men process it way differently. I feel like a mother who has given birth to triplets on the edge of a high cliff, and the babies are dangling by the umbilical cord which has a gazillion nerves in it, and everywhere I turn one of the babies is sawing away the cord little by little. The babies are about to cut themselves free over Grand Canyon, and fall, and all I can do is lie here shouting, "Nooooooooooooooo!"