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



7 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks, Sue. It goes by so fast. All of it.

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  2. Poignant indeed. But it makes me feel as if I must have been a truly awful mother: quite a few articles appear in the press at this time of year about 'the empty nest'. And they describe, as you do, how I thought I'd feel. But I didn't. Though I missed each of my children as they went on to that next stage, I felt more of their excitement than my loss. It was new beginning for me too, as well as for them.

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  3. You were certainly not an awful mother. The feelings I describe are very mixed ones. Although not highlighted in this piece, relief was among them. There is no wrong or right way to get through this stage in life. There is just getting through it.

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  4. A bike ride with that special man might help you get through it (smile). And just think how much more wonderful every holiday and special occasion will be when he travels home to attend. Happy Thanksgiving Leann.

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  5. Thanks, Michelle. This was written a few years ago. He's home again now. Still, time passes. I'm no longer the Queen of the World and the Font of All Useful Knowledge to my children anymore like I was for so many years. It was a great gig while it lasted. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Thanks for visiting!

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