This morning, my son Luke is taking his last final exam as
an undergraduate. (It’s in advanced inorganic chemistry—better him, than me). My
daughter took hers yesterday. I now have two college graduates who will soon be
leaving home. (Though, of course, in the intervening days, I have plans: please
help Matthew study for the math section of the SAT, help me plant the new hedge
plants, scrub and re-stain the deck, etc.)
And soon they’ll be moving out. Luke moves out in June—to
starting working at a university lab where he plans to begin his PhD in
organo-metallic chemistry in the fall. Ariel will move out in August to start
her PhD work in mathematics at Emory.
A dear friend took me aside the other day to tell me that
having two kids leave at the same time is extra hard. (My friend had twins.) I’m
trying to prepare myself by reminding myself of a promise I made to myself
sixteen years ago—that I’d be truly grateful.
If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I have an
autistic son. And at the time he was diagnosed (and we were told he might never
learn to speak), I heard several mothers complaining about how sad they were
that their children were leaving home. While I understood their grief, it
seemed to me that they were missing something huge. That they should be
celebrating too. Our children don’t belong to us—not like some kind of
possession. God merely gives them to us to raise. And if all goes well, then
they begin lives of their own, which is as it should be.
Soon half of my kids will be gone. (And, yes, I’m sure I
will cry.) But I will be cheering them on in their new lives. And I’ll be
trying to figure out how to get them to visit—I’m guessing roast beef dinner
and laundry might do it. And when they’re here, I’ll hand them a paintbush—after
all, the deck needs re-staining. And one of my kids will say, “You had us just
so you could have slave labor, right?” And I’ll say, “Absolutely.”
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| Photo by Chenspec, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
BTW, today is the last day of 99 cents sale for Screwing Up Babylon.
I wish my parents had the same mindset as you. They think they own me until they die as if I owe them simply for being born.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to your children though! Those achievements sound amazing!
Having two people close to you leave at the same time does sound difficult.
ReplyDeleteI can't really say much about this, since I haven't had kids, but I can imagine how hard this might be.
ReplyDeleteIt was hard for me when I had to leave home the first time. And scary, but exhilarating at the same time. :-)
I had to let my daughter go for studies and letting go is the hardest thing I did.
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