A Time For Everything

Autumn has finally arrived for real. When I step outside I can see it, I feel it, and I can even smell it. There is something so nostalgic about fall. Just a passing from one season to another, yet somehow more than just that. Summer days are filled with sunshine and blue skies, picnics, road trips and ballgames, evenings at the lake or on the shore of the river.

Somedays we just sit, swaying gently on the porch swing, watching fireflies. Summer is a season of light, a time of action. Now, Summer is fading, giving way to a different kind of light, a light that has a different angle. A light that lies lower in the sky and gives a different look to things. The sky is bluer, just in time to show off the color of the leaves against it. There is change you can feel. The air is different, the sky is different, and the landscape around reflects it all.

I feel the changes more this year than ever before. I can feel them in my body. I'm not so young anymore. Things ache that didn't. It takes longer to get going in the morning. It takes more effort to do things that were easy before. The saying " Life is like an hourglass glued to the table." has a meaning now it didn't have a few years back. Maybe all this melancholy over the seasons changing is because Jesse is leaving.

I remember when I left Laura at Berea. I thought I would never again be able to take a deep breath without crying. It was always right there, just below the surface, the pain of missing my child. But she was only 2 hours from home and we could see each other and talk often. I learned to cope with her absence. She shared her life as much as possible with us and we added layers to the connection we shared. She has continued to do so and I find nothing has diminished, only increased. The space we share in life is richer and more colorful.

With Jesse it is different. We haven't really shared such a strong connection as Laura and I since he was a preteen. Being the first teenager in our house could not have been easy on him. It certainly wasn't easy on me. I had no idea what to do. He pushed and I clung. He would be angry and I got mad back. I scolded and he stared defiantly. I was so afraid, he didn't care. I made so many mistakes. So did he.

I fell so in love with that boy from the second I found out that I was pregnant. I cannot explain how deeply I felt connected to him. He was the fulfillment of a dream. I was unprepared for how intense the feelings would be. I was petrified by the idea that something would happen that I couldn't protect him from. Losing him would be more than I could bear.

Everything about him was perfection in my eyes. The problem was I wasn't perfect and neither was he. I was so young. I had not become a person yet myself. And yet, here I was trying to nurture someone else when I was barely able to stand on my own. The truth is, just like my other three children, he came to me a little person already. He was there all along, and I was the one lucky enough to have the chance to find out who he was, all I had to do was be there when I was needed. The journey with my children has been an awesome one and I would do it all over in a heartbeat.

Now, just as I am getting to know the adult he has become, he is moving a thousand miles away and I am afraid again. Afraid of the same thing I was afraid of since the day he was born. Losing him. Losing him, means losing part of me, there is no way to separate the two. It makes me uncomfortable and I don't like to be uncomfortable.

I have built my little nest, got all warm and cozy, now a storm has come along and I have to repair all the damage.

It is a new season for me. There are new challenges, new experiences, new feelings to deal with. My job is done. I have to find a new path, a new way of being a mother.

I have to look deep inside and discover how to live this new chapter in life. What do I find? Someone else to nurture.

The truth may hurt, but the fact is I guess I'm not through growing up myself.