Monday, August 26, 2013

The Carpets of Hartsfield

Saying goodbye to my grown child was one of the most disorienting experiences I've ever lived through. Talk about cognitive dissonance. This was written after the exit of my youngest child and only son. I'm posting it today in sympathy with a great, life-long friend, Jackie, who just delivered  her only girl, our Kristin, to a university several states from home. 

A million miles of carpet covers the floor at the Atlanta airport, and the walls are lined with art. Time expands and contracts here.  All around us people hurry along wishing for more of it, or sit and wait, wishing for less.
In an invisible cone of privacy I say goodbye to my child, my last one, my boy.  Touching his forehead at the hairline, I smooth back thick strands. I can’t help it.

I have to reach up so far to touch his head now. There, just there, is a small whorl of hair, like the eye of a storm.  The first time I saw it was the day I gave birth to him.

Photo by Chelsea Lindsey
Goodbye.  
For him, the word is a portal, an opening, the beginning of his new life at university, out in the world on his own.  For me it is the closing door of a house that I don’t live in anymore. I lower my hand and take a step back. I think of all the things he doesn’t know yet. I breathe in. I breathe out.
The walls of the airport in Atlanta are lined with art, and a million miles of carpet cover the floor. In an invisible cone of privacy I stand on one small square, alone, an island in the great ocean of people all around me.
Goodbye I say, goodbye, goodbye, as nineteen years and most of my life turns.  He smiles and waves. Then he faces forward and dives headlong into the tide.

Our boy.

Knows now there's never an end to it.
 Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

               Leann