grad
past, present, future
It is almost a week since my oldest graduated from high school and I am just now beginning to settle back into my body. I don’t know where I have been, but not here exactly. My thoughts and feelings have all felt abstract, some construct within the frenzy of activity of these final weeks and days. I would love to have a huge, body-wracking cry but the tears are caught somewhere behind my eyes, and in my throat.
A couple of evenings a week over the past few months I have been channeling my inner 18-year-old and getting stoned and watching Dune One or Two. I am obsessed with both of these films and love the way that watching them again and again in order or at random simultaneously peels back the layers and deepens the plot line. It is just so good. And while this behavior may have something to do with the grief that is stuck in my chest it also runs parallel to the remapping of my journey into adulthood that my daughter’s life contextualizes and reveals. In other words, there is some deep revelatory and transformational shit going on inside the cells of the organism that makes up meg and I am nowhere near the bottom of it.
I got pregnant with Maple when I was freshly 27. I imagined myself a grown-ass woman then and now that notion just makes me smile. Time is peculiar and strangely non-linear which perhaps is why Dune has captivated my imagination so wholly, with all of its dreams and visions weaving past, present, and future. I can barely remember who I was 18 years ago and am certain I am not now who I was then, and yet, there was something inside of me (and Chris too) that was essential and abiding and functioned to travel us through time and space into this moment in which the picture, while incomplete, makes sense in a way that we could only have imagined back then. All of these pieces fit together and make a life and a family and an ideal that we are doing our best to live in to today. How strange. How bittersweet. How perfect.
A couple of weeks ago I was driving Eider to practice and he said that he was sad about Maple leaving. He doesn’t talk about it much; in many ways their relationship this past year has been more contentious than loving; so when he expresses his vulnerability regarding this big change that we are all heading for, I listen. I try to reflect the absolutes that he has constructed regarding the end of their shared childhood and lean with hope toward what this new chapter of their relationship might look like. It is impossible to know, but the foundation gives me a lot of faith. We will be missing a big piece, no doubt, when we go from a daily five to a daily four. We will shift and become something a bit different. How could we not? But love and connection carry, across mountains and rivers and state lines. Something new will emerge and as much as my grief is condensed around the absolutes of change, I trust what is right now and what might be for our family within this next becoming.
Who my children are growing into thrills and delights me. As much as I want them near me forever my desire to bear witness to their unfolding into the wide world carries more weight. I’m eager to see what Maple does in art school. The relationships she forms, the opportunities she embarks upon, and the grace with which she will undoubtedly continue to create wherever she goes. And the same with the boys. This is the good shit. Chrissy and I get to continue parenting each of them in these expanding spirals of growth and contribution. None of it has been a disappointment. All of it has exceeded my wildest dreams.
At Maple’s commencement ceremony last week, I needed to explain the events to Freddy in a way big enough for him to settle down and take note. He needed some gravity for the moment and I tried to give it to him. I said something like hey buddy, this is one of the biggest moments of your big sister’s life so far. This ceremony is how she, and all of these other big kids here today, become an adult. It marks the end of her childhood. Ok and while none of us actually believe that she is a full-on adult yet, for a not-quite five-year-old this was an idea that holds enough charm to capture his attention and an appropriate degree of reverence. He bore witness too in his way. And she graduated. She crossed one of the biggest thresholds we have between the overlapping yet distinct worlds of innocence and maturity. She has moved more solidly into the realm of her sovereign self-governance.
She is hers now. As she always has been, and I am no longer in a position to pretend that she is mine. I love this piece of parenting perhaps most of all. This fantasy of possession that we deconstruct over the course of raising humans and in so doing come to understand the broader, more irrevocable nature of belonging. It hurts so hard. But in all of the ways that show me that the path is true. Maybe there are some tears in me yet. Of course there are. Forever. Backward and forward through time. As long as I breathe.