I’m on my way to New York to drop my second oldest child off at college. For the second time. The first time we did it was in September 2021, when we drove from Denver to Chicago and I dropped him at the University of Chicago. (By we drove I mean I drove, as my San Francisco city-raised child isn’t very interested in driving, much like many his age.)
After moving him into his dorm room and getting him what he still needed at the local Target, I dropped my rental SUV and headed to the O’Hare airport to fly home to Denver. And proceeded to cry in my beer at the airport bar, while a bunch of strangers comforted me.
My newly dropped-off second oldest child — at one time he was the baby (until I ended up having two more kids in my 40s) and I still think of him as my first youngest — was grown. He was off and living on his own. Sure, it was a dorm on campus, but it would soon be an apartment and I would have very little idea how he spent his days (as it should be . . . I mean, do you want your adult children giving you the minute by minute update on their daily comings and goings? No, that’s weird. And is also known as failure to launch.)
After I left Pennsylvania for college 3000 miles away in California in 1988, I never came home for more than brief holiday visits. Sure I did that regularly. Still do, or try to. But I never lived with my parents again. Never lived in the same state as them again.
Crying at that airport bar, I mourned the loss — otherwise known, for the children, as growing up — of my bigs. The oldest was a senior in college at that point, getting ready to graduate from U.C. Berkeley. And this first youngest, was now off and running. Given that he is the quiet one, has always kind of kept to himself, I knew the chance of getting calls or visits on the regular were slim.
I needed to adjust to life with two adult children. Thanksgiving and Passover visits. Once a month calls. Texts consisting of short non-sentences and emojis. That kind of thing. I was an empty nester. Except I wasn’t because I had two elementary school aged children at home. But it still felt like I was because I was supposed to be an empty nester at this point in my life. And the original set of kids was gone.
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