January 13, 2024
I look at the pictures on my phone.. first him standing by his car alone and then he and I together by his car. I'm standing too close and holding too tight because the clock has ticked down to zero. His little orange Honda is packed to the roof but his eager anticipation and excitement couldn't be held by a vehicle of any size. He has been on many great adventures but they all, eventually, led back home. This trip is one way. Google tells me it's 638 miles or 9 hr and 35 min but it feels longer, much, much longer because this trip will never end. My oldest child, my precious, first born baby boy, has began the journey of his adult life.
When he was a newborn, I developed mastitis and when he would latch on I would wince in pain, within a day, he would also wince every time he began to nurse. I was amazed that he could barely open his eyes and already we were in perfect sync. The first year of his life was absolutely blissful. He was a quiet, thoughtful child and I was an eager, devoted mother. All day long, I worked to make sure his world was perfect. He was dressed right, ate healthy, slept well. At that time, we were advised to let them "cry it out" in the crib. Co-sleeping was taboo but I couldn't stand to hear him bereft so I slept with him in my arms in the recliner for months and months. We took long meandering walks through our historic neighborhood and the park just a few blocks away. We played on the floor of his muted, pastel green jungle-themed nursery with educational toys. I read him books for hours at a time. He was happy to sit in my lap and alternate staring at me and staring at the page. He was, as the saying goes, "my heart walking around outside my body".
Babies turn into toddlers, who turn into children, who turn into teens and then young adults. He is adventurous and has spent summers and long semesters abroad. He hasn't really been here for very long stretches of time since he left high school, a couple of months here and there but it is his landing place. It's his permanent address, the place where shot records, childhood teddy bears and life long memories reside.
On August 4th of 2023 he came home from his last adventure in Portugal. He came home with the intent to leave. He was going to find his first "real" job and move out. I remember thinking that he was 23 and it was time for him to get on with the next big step in life. I didn't want a kid that had "failure to launch". Don't get me wrong, I knew I would miss him but I didn't want to hold him back.
It was nearly 5 months to the day, that his loaded down Honda headed east to his new home. I am so grateful for EVERY SINGLE DAY of those 5 months. They would turn out to be some of the most consequential of my life and he was right there beside me, still quiet and still thoughtful but a grown man.
Almost as soon as he returned, we realized we were at the end stages of my Mom's (his Granny's) life. He was there for nearly every day of her hospice care and he was absolutely indispensable to all of us. One of the many things that terrified me when we brought her home was the medication. She wasn't much able to tell us when she was in pain or overwhelmed with fear so it was left to us to do the best we could. He took it over. He studied all the medication and created charts and became responsible for giving her meds. It was such a relief and we all trusted him completely. The rest of us were too upset to figure it out. Nearly every night he took my older brother out for a few hours just to talk, to get away to breathe for a moment. He ran errands for everyone and treated my Dad with so much care. I can't imagine how much harder it would have been to go through that without him.
The morning she passed, I went upstairs to change clothes for the funeral home attendants that would soon arrive. After I dressed, I laid on the bed in the dark and cried. What had just happened was more than I could process and more pain and sadness than I could ever have imagined. Within a few minutes, my son, came in. He laid on the bed beside me and we held hands, cried and tried to articulate how we felt. Our whispered conversation led to talk of our regrets, our dreams and philosophical musings on the nature of humanity and life. It must have been more than 20 years since we lay on a bed and held hands for more than a few seconds but here we were, once again, perfectly in sync.
He has been gone about a week and a half and it is going great. His job is fantastic, his apartment is good and today he got a great deal on a sofa off Facebook Marketplace! I am so happy and excited for him! Of course, there are bumps and bruises aplenty ahead -- that is life. But, I said it to him over and over in the days before he left. "You are NEVER alone, I will always be here for you and my home will always be your home. I am just a phone call away. There is no problem too big that we can't solve together. We're good like that."
I was his home for 8882 days (24yrs 3mo 25 days). And now he can take all my pride, all of our synchronicity and create a life filled with love, learning and great memories.