I was the sun and the children were my planets

I wasn’t wrong about them leaving. My husband kept telling me that I was. It wasn’t the end of the world when one kid, then another, and then the last one packed their bags and left for college.

But it was the end of something. “Can you take me, mom?” “What is there for dinner?” “What’s your opinion?”

You are the sun and they are the planets. And there was life on those planets, non-stop circular plans and parties and friends coming and going, thoughts and dreams, telephone ringing and noisy doors.

And I have to send them down. to watch. to glow.

Then they went, one by one.

“They will be back,” my husband said. And he was right. They are back. But he was wrong, too, because they went back in time — not always, not for planets anymore, making their orbits predictable, but unpredictable, like falling stars.

You always miss him. Always know where they are. At school. in the practice of playing. in the ball game. at a friend. I always look at the clock in the middle of the day and expect the door to open, sigh, smile, laugh, and sigh. “How was school?” He answered for years in a lot of detail. “Then he said . . . Then I told him . . . ”

Then he answered with difficulty at all.

Always, knowing his friends.

her favorite programme.

What did you eat for breakfast?

What was she wearing at school?

what he thinks.

How do you feel.

I left my friend’s twin girls for Roger Williams yesterday. They are her fourth and fifth children. She’s been on this road three times before. You think it would be easier. “I don’t know what I would do without them,” she said every day for months.

And I said nothing, because, really, what is there to say?

chapter ends. Another chapter begins. One door closes and another door opens. The best thing a parent can give their kids are wings. I read all this stuff when my kids left home and then thought what I’m thinking now: What do these words mean?

Eighteen years is not a chapter in anyone’s life. It is a complete book, and this book ends and what comes next is related to but different from everything that went before.

Previously it was an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Previously, feeding, changing, teaching, resting, directing, and disciplining, everything was practical.

Currently?

Now children are young and alone and parents on the sidelines, not just a change of class. It is a drastic change.

As for closing the door? Can you close the door and forget for a moment your children and your love for them and your fear for them too? And did they only occupy one room in your head? But they are in every room in your head and in your heart.

As for the analogy of wings? It’s sweet. But children are not birds. Parents do not let them go and build another nest and they all have new offspring next year.

Saying goodbye to your children and their childhood is a lot more difficult than all the bravest sayings seem. Because that’s what going to college is. Farewell.

It is not death. This is not a tragedy.

But it’s not a thing either.

In order for a child to grow, the body changes. He needs more sleep. He refuses the food he used to like. Expand and adapt.

To give up a child, the body also changes. She sighs and cries and feels weightless and heavy at the same time.

Driving home alone without them is the worst. And the first few days.

But then things get better. The kids call, they go home, they bring their friends, and the house fills up with their energy again.

Life goes on.

“Can you drive me to the mall?” “Mom, make him stop!” I don’t miss that part of parenting and playing driver and judge.

But I still miss them, after all these years, the children who were, at the dinner table, beside me on the sofa, talking on the phone, sleeping in their rooms.

security.

residence.

my king.

Beverly Beckham’s column appears every two weeks. It can be accessed at [email protected].

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