Moving On

It seems that I am writing the same things about my kids as I did last year. They still are not sure they want to leave home, still not sure they don't want to chuck it all to live in their bedrooms, watch cartoons and ask me if I mind very much making them dinner.

A month ago my daughter left for Berkeley, California. Yesterday my son left for Austin, Texas. He's off on a new adventure and he's not sure . . . He has a friend who works in an office job and on the side buys rental real estate. His friend has already purchased 4 quadraplexes.

He thinks this is what he would like to do -- get a day job, establish a good work and credit history, buy rental property. He also has Americorps tuition-credit, so he's wondering about grad school.

My first response to real estate in Texas was, "Can't you do this in California?" His just gave me "the look." You know the one that says mom as a two or three syllable word? Days passed. He finally explained that Texas has two advantages (three, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition): his friend is there doing this very thing; his friend's dad is there and has owned rental property for over 30 years; California real estate is more expensive. Good points. I can move back to Calif even if my kids don't live there!

He is driving to Texas. He got his first cell phone and we added him to our family plan so he would have a way to get job phone calls. He calls each night to tell me where he is -- Virginia the first night. Arkansas tonight. And each call ends with, "Mom, I don't know if this is what I should be doing."

I don't know either. But I know it really is time for him to leave home. There are no good job prospects here. Real Estate is pretty expensive. There's a certain inertia that happens to the kids who stay here and all but one of his closest friends have left.

I'll miss him. He's been my tv buddy this summer. We've been watching summer shows -- Warehouse 13, Eureka, Burn Notice, etc. So while his dad is off playing or teaching music, my boy and I sit on the couch & watch tv together. I can talk, but only at the commercials. He'll explain what I have missed if I am attempting to watch tv and be on the computer simultaneously.

When I woke up this morning I was the only one home. My husband left for work at 0-dark-100. My son left yesterday. The house felt different. There was a different energy.

It kind of feels like we're all moving on -- finding that next thing which calls to us. I spent the whole day making art. It'll be interesting to see how we all weather this year and what lessons we learn.

Friends & Lovers

I've known Amy since my library school days. We met at work and it was instant friendship. I know her family and became friends with some of her friends. I thought you had to be under the age of 12 to make a new best friend. She introduced me to Cape Cod and is godmother to my kids. I went to her 50th birthday blow-out weekend and she would have gone to mine if I had had one! We've actually gotten closer recently. She was the one I turned to when I was sure my daughter, then aged 19, would never speak to me again. She said my daughter would like me again and she was right!

She's living near me for the summer and has only been around for a week, but it has been so eye opening. Since she's going to be around for the summer and likes vintage goods, she offered to help with with my antique shop. She came over yesterday and I gave her the job of pricing. I really don't like to price. She plopped herself down in the linens and made up prices. It was great. It was so nice to feel I have someone who I can talk to about the shop, who will help me and who is on the same wave length.

This morning as I was in the shower I had a major epiphany about crucial relationships in my life. I don't know about you, but the shower is my most productive place to think! I was thinking about how nice it was to have Amy to share the shop with. For years I have tried to get my husband to be my partner in the business. It doesn't bore him completely. He has ideas, he will give me his opinion about displays and will move the furniture around if I ask him. But, sadly, it never feels like he's completely engaged. And I've known for a while that without a partner or a deadline, I just don't get many projects done.

What I realized is that there are people who think like me and there are people I have much in common with. And I don't have to demand both from one individual. Amy and I think alike. My husband and I do not. Amy's sense of style, her sensibility is similar to mine. We can work together and we have, both as librarians and cleaning out her parent's homes. We could easily start a business staging houses, or being bridal consultants, or selling antiques. We just think alike.

My husband and I do not think alike. When I met him, he was the first person I was family-close to who didn't criticize me. He listened to all my stories and was interested. So all these years I've believed we think alike. We don't. I even don't care why, which is strange cuz I always care why! But in this instance it doesn't matter why, cuz just knowing we don't think a like makes so much of my married life make sense!

What we have is a life in common. And I don't mean our married life. We have our childhood in common, even tho we didn't meet til college. We are the same age and grew up in similar neighborhoods in the greater Los Angeles basin. We experienced the '60's. We listened to the same AM radio stations. We know the same songs from high school. We remember the Sunset Strip "riots," and know it was the basis for Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth. We both went to The Troubador, even if we didn't see the same groups.

We also have a life in common after we met. I knew within three days of meeting him at summer camp that I would spend the rest of my life with him. We have that summer camp and all those friends in common. We have the same religious and spiritual beliefs. He knows my family, I know his. We have kids together.

Things have been difficult between us for the past six or seven years. Not consistently difficult, in fact inconsistently so, which probably makes it all the worse. Things will be going along smoothly and then I'll get hurt and threaten to leave. He wouldn't seem to understand. And I couldn't figure out why my thinking isn't perfectly clear and understandable to him. He understands the feelings, but my thinking was foreign to him. Well, if after all these years of me not really understanding how he thinks, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know how I think either. I don't know if this will make a difference to our lives, this understanding that we have lots in common, but not the way we think. I don't even know if I will tell him of this "ah ha." It helps me, but will it help him? He might think it's cool and then again he might just not get it!

Luckily we will always have Paris? No, forget Paris . . . we will always have our roots in common.

Kids and the Weather

Kids may be a little like New England weather. Don't like it, wait 10 minutes, it will change. And that's what's happened. I got a phone message from my daughter yesterday. The paper she has stressed out about, the one she was going to quit college over, she got a 95. And lots of positive comments from the professor. The feeling she would never be able to study abroad while an undergraduate, was dealt with today when she was accepted in a 4 week mini-abroad to Eastern Europe. I can let go for now.

My son called every night on his drive to Yosemite. He was letting me hold on just a bit. He discovered he could drive 12 hour days. There's family precedent on my DH's side and it worried me a bit that ERR would drive himself off an overpass. He didn't. His accommodations seemed even odder than my forays into cheap motels. When he told me he thought he might stay at a nicer place the next night, some place like Motel 6, I hesitated to ask where he had been staying. I guess Motel 6 seems a big step up from places that rent for $24 a night!

I haven't heard from him since he started the job. (No cell phone, limited internet access, I hope he hasn't been eaten by bears). But the morning he was driving into the park to check in, he told me, "Mom, I don't know why I took this job. But I know why I drove out here. The desert is an amazing place."

I do not know if I will ever not worry about my kids. But this week has reminded me that there's an equilibrium and when things have been stormy for them, pretty soon, like the weather, it changes to sunny skies.

Holding On & Letting Go

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon . . .

Last Saturday my daughter came home to get fitted for contacts lenses. Perhaps we should have waited a month til the end of the semester. But it is nice to be able to see the blackboard and know who you are waving to.

Coming home may have been too much of a contrast with her school life. This past week has been real tough for her. She had a paper due (since she is taking 4 English courses this semester to complete her Writing, Publishing, Literature major, when doesn't she have a paper due?) and it was not going well. I even promised she did not have to return to school next year. But in the meantime, please eat something.

The paper got completed and turned in on time. She took herself out to eat with my credit card, things were good for a little while.

Then the left contact lenses started giving her a hard time. It hurt, it wouldn't go in, it wouldn't come out. No I was not mad that I had spent the money on them. Yes, I was pretty sure the doctor could sort them out and give her a new one that fit better when she sees him in another week. Why don't you take them both out and just take a nap.

My daughter's week was all about holding on. (r)

My son's was about letting go. (l)

On Thursday morning my son got in his car and drove west toward Yosemite, where he has a job as cook's helper at the Yosemite Lodge. On Wednesday night after everything was packed, he sat down next to me and said, "I don't think this is where I want to go."

It is a fine line between pushing my kids to do what they have agreed to do and telling them it is ok to bag it. The rules are clear. They have to have given it a lot of thought and prayer. I want them to be happy. I want them to be good people.

We talked. He decided to go anyway. If he hates it, he can come home (as long as he gives them adequate notice). I understand his dilemma. He's tired of people going ga ga about Yosemite. The desert is what calls to him -- he would prefer to be at Joshua Tree National Monument, or Death Valley National Park. And he's so done with culinary. Summer jobs since HS, college work-study in the dish-room, he's just not that into food! He has a degree in environmental studies. Just being at Yosemite may open lots of doors. He knows it's a good thing to go -- he just has to find the balance between head and heart.

I wanted to hold on to my son and let go of my daughter, but that's not what my job was this week.

I will miss him

There's a lot they don't teach you at mothering school.

They don't teach you that wanting them to grow up to be productive, independent adults does not make it a bit easier when they take a job on the other side of the country.

When my son was 12 years old, I walked into his room. Probably to put some laundry away. I had to walk out quickly or explain why I was crying for no understandable reason. You see, I looked at him, and he was no longer a little boy. He wasn't grown up, but he had turned some corner. Even knowing this, half his life ago, it never occurred to me and they never told me in mothering school if you do a good enough job and like your kids, you just might want them to stay at home forever.

They do tell you you have to let your kids go. I know this. My mom was always so adamant that sons really need to be independent at 18, though daughters will always be there. She didn't get it quite right. My brother has only now moved out of her neighborhood, and I was the one who left home at 18!

Roots and Wings. You have to give them roots to feel firmly planted in a place, a philosophy, a religion, a family, a community, something that is grounded. You also have to give them wings to soar in their imagination, in travel, in new ideas, in education, in love and friendship, a sense of limitless possibilities.

So next week, my son heads off with all the worldly goods he can fit in his compact car to take a job in another beautiful place. His new job is in a field he is ready to leave, but he hopes the place, a national park, will offer more opportunities to use what he studied in college. That part I am really happy for! Actually, I'm happy for everything, the independence, the need to be his own person, to find that calling that makes him happy to get up in the morning.

I'll just miss him.