Single Parenting

On the first day of high school my son found his way, and I lost my breath. I hoped the cold rush that permeated my chest, throat and limbs was because I hadn’t yet had coffee; but I knew better. 

I also knew the feelings that washed over me were not because the building he strode toward was big enough to house multiple air craft carriers.  It wasn’t because the metal doors looked like they could swallow him whole. It wasn’t because he walked among beings that looked strangely like adults — with boobs, beards, swaggers, swiveling hips and caramel mochachinos. 

As he walked away from the car, he became increasingly more absorbed in a living Seurat.  The composition, as a whole, was magnificent.  Separately it was a sea of indiscernible, colorful, teenage dots.  I will never forget how it looked as he became part of the big pocket, flip flop and muffin top landscape.  In a strange way, it was strikingly beautiful.

I was unsettled not due to the vastness or the newness.  I was awed because he fit right into it. He belonged.  It’s where he is supposed to be.  I have to keep reminding myself that it’s all good.  At 14 + years old, 5 foot 8 inches tall, with broad shoulders and a stocky build, he is once again and at long last, right where he is supposed to be.  And,  after a year and a half of treading lightly in shallow waters – he dived right in.  I was the one who held my breath.

I wonder if he hadn’t leaned over and let me kiss him goodbye, if this self-proclaimed hardened heart would have cried the whole way home.  Probably.

All I could think of that was in that short 5 minute ride was that in four years I’ll be dropping him off at college and not picking him up at 3pm.  And how the hell am I supposed to get ready for THAT?  Then it will be just me and my daughter at home and then she’ll go to college and I’d be left alone with dogs and a dishwasher that probably only needs to be run once a week.  Now that seems delightful, but something tells me it feels quite dreadful.  Someone should really re-think this focus on education. 

And then I got a grip. He’s fourteen. And she’s eleven.

The biggest waste of time in my adult life was the time I spent looking to and planning for the future and not living completely in the moment.  And while seven thousand of my closest friends have already been kind enough to tell me that the next four years are going to fly by, I need only to look back for a second to be able to look forward with a slow and deliberate gaze.

Four years might feel like it goes quickly, but every day brings a myriad of experiences and emotions.  Each one is worthy of consideration, acknowledgement and careful placement in our lives.  If you experience life and live it minute by minute you never have to wonder where the time has gone.  You’ll know because you were there.
 
And, while I want always to take it moment by moment, I also am on the edge of my seat waiting for my daughter to start school on Thursday so I can have some time alone to write, to think, to breathe or just to watch tv without someone desperately needing a grilled cheese sandwich. Is that too much to ask after a summer that has lasted, oh, approximately, 83 days?

At first he didn’t say much when he walked into the kitchen after his exhaustive and expansive first day as a freshman.  I don’t know what’s in the water over there but I swear he was three inches taller than he was that very morning.

He didn’t bolt to his room. I made him a cup of soup and we both sat down.  I put my elbow on the table, rested my head in my hand, hopeful he would talk.  He did. 

And while he was preoccupied eating and recounting, I stared at his soft green eyes and watched his large expressive gestures. I listened intently to each word, knowing these initimate 14 year old moments are to be coveted and treasured — even, and perhaps especially — on our first day of high school, after 83 days of summer. 

This was one of those times I was both glad, and sad, to be a single parent.  I had no one to share it with, but it was all mine.  Do you have conflicting feelings about being a single parent?