Spring Eternal

It's April.

I was born in April. So I just celebrated my birthday, which I am totally okay with. If you worry about looking, feeling and being older, you are going to spend ALOT of time, well, just worrying.

April is the first month, where we can see the actual signs of Spring. The air smells different, newer. More earthy. It's the first month of the school year that I can feel the end of it fast approaching. For families with kids it equals planning for dances, school trips, new sports seasons, the closing of the 3rd quarter and the beginning of the last. Report Cards. Planning next year's class schedule. Realizing that your kids are almost a new grade older.

We shake it off. Winter dust, frost, blues and doldrums. Especially if you live in our New England, as April can, in fact, still feel like winter. So any signs of the earth thawing out and coming to life again ignites passion and excitement. We've made it through another winter. Winters used to kill people. Rejoice.

This April feels a bit different. For I am very aware of the fact that, my very next April, my next birthday, my next Spring, I will be preparing for a kid to leave. The transition is markable, like pegs in a cribbage board, or pencil dashes on the door jam to mark a year's growth.

Last night, my son and I had dinner together at a restaurant down the street. My daughter is on a school trip to Washington DC and my husband is in New York on business. We talked, thank God, because sometimes we just pass each other and check in. "How are you, babe?" "Have you eaten?" "How was school?" "Where are you off to?"

We caught up, talked about the important things going on, laughed, he poked fun at me a little, talked about his social life, how he hopes to live in London for a year at some point. How he wants to bring his car to college if possible. He assured me that he is okay. In the world, his world, that I am certain that I know so much about but yet that is still so mysterious to me, he has convinced that he is all right. He is OK. And I have to believe.

It's odd. When children are born, they are these tiny little helpless creatures and you know it's out there. That day that they will leave home. Some days you can't wait for it to get here. But most days, it's just a day that's far away. What startles me the most is the intense, looming feeling of missing someone so much that you're used to seeing everyday, even if it's a morning grunt on the way to the bathroom. Someone who came from you. A part of your family. Someone who you love and live with, who will go live with someone else. And that someone else might just be more important than you. They, of course, will be. Natural, but startling. It's always been there, but it's closer to the surface of the skin. It runs through my veins now instead of just deep within. It's liquid, and I sweat it out.

I remember, hearing about older women having 'empty nest syndrome'. I was cold to it, because it didn't dawn on me that I would be one of them one day. Even when I had children, I thought for sure that I would be immune. Get out. Buh-bye. Don't come back unless you plan to pay rent.  Now I just want to grab all of those women (and men too, if you suffer) and wrap them in a big blanket of sisterhood with apologies and compassion and tears. Tears of both sadness and anticipation. Anticipation for the wonder of what will they become? Who will they love? Who will they hurt? What will they do when someone hurts them? Who will they change?

Dramatic. Pathetic. Boring. Cliché. Ridiculous. Utterly self absorbed and irrational. All of these things. And more. But there is no stopping the flood. Until it happens. And just like every other thing that has come along, it will pass. The crest of the wave will crash and then the cool water will rush and pool and soak into the ground where green will eventually poke and rise from the soil. The petals will unfold, the air will sweeten and I will find myself in the park under the tree he coaxed me to climb last year, reading a book about love and life.

When he goes, I hope he knows that I did my best. When he goes, I hope he feels loved, for that has always been, even on those days that I wished for today to come. When he goes, I hope he remembers to cover his mouth when he sneezes, because, that's obvious, it will reflect on me. When he goes, I hope he's not annoying. I hope he's courteous. I hope he's mindful. I hope he's healthy and strong and I hope he never appears to know too much. I want most for him to be a perpetual student of life.

And he has to face time me at least once a week. He had better face time me.



"No Winter lasts forever, no Spring skips it's turn." ~Hal Borland