How it is that days and weeks seem to drag on forever and the years fly by?
My husband and oldest son took my youngest son (age 12) to sleep away camp yesterday for a 2 week stay. This is the first time he will be away from home this long. I miss him so much more than I had expected. After all, he is my third child and you would think by now I would be used to these type of changes.
O.K., I know what your thinking- “EMPTY NEST SYNDROME, MID LIFE CRISIS,
A SERIOUS DOSE OF PMS”. While it is probably a mixture of all these things, that is not the point of this story.
The funny part is that my oldest son went to this very camp at the same age and the experience was totally different. We planned and prepared in anticipation of his going and experienced this as a “major life event”, typical of what parents feel with their first child. In fact, he received so many letters from our family (immediate and extended) that he won the award for this at the end of camp. With Scott, we were lucky to get all of his stuff packed up in time. My have we become jaded!
But, now that he is gone, the feelings seem much stronger. Somehow, I think we all assume that he will be here as “the little one” forever though he is years more mature than his age and ready to spread his wings (what else could he be with two older brothers to model). Even our dog seems sad.
I continue to think about how the moments slip away and, suddenly, want to hold onto each and every one of them before they are gone. This makes me cry which is always a telltale sign that it is true.
Isn’t life kind of like a kaleidoscope -you quickly turn the viewer to see what’s next but sometimes miss the beauty of each individual pattern.
The bright side to the story is that we will surely miss him more than he will miss home which is how it should be. M y middle son and I also got to spend the weekend just the two of us. We bonded over Chinese food and a movie. We shared taking care of the dog.
In fact, I think we had a moment where we just held the kaleidoscope still and enjoyed what we saw.
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