"I'm not going out tonight. Staying home."
"Have you eaten?"
The next several minutes are three people figuring out what to do for dinner. Maybe a movie. But which one? The Venn Diagram doesn't have a lot of overlap, but we always defer to what ever he'll watch with us.
Such a normal ordinary moment.
He heads upstairs while Leigh and I (mostly Leigh) cobble together some food. We suspect he furtively snuck some dirty dishes UP to his room to add the collection (no way that amount of food service debris occurs without conscious effort).
Milling about the kitchen we hear guitar, which he how he idles when he has to wait on us. Leigh and I look at each other and smile. Our kid has a talent totally foreign to us.
As I get older, I am increasingly conscious of moments. In "ordinary" moments, I often actually stop to just appreciate ordinary. Sixty years, a busy life, ordinary is still a gift.
I go upstairs, he's put down the guitar. We're passing in the hallway (many of our conversations are while passing in the hallway). "You know, we're amazed that you can do that. You stuck with it all those years, it's part of you."
We have one of those talks, casual, not quite important enough to get out of the hall and sit down - that would be too intentional.
I talk of how life is long and there are so many moments, but on the cosmic scale it's all just a flash. "Yeah, that's why I don't think on the cosmic scale."
No need to. Yet.
But I tell him that this terribly ordinary moment, everyone just decompressing from the week, where he casually unselfconsciously incidentally awes us is a very special moment for this old man in its ordinariness. He accepts this gracefully - which is in itself special and will make this super ordinary moment one I'll long remember.
Life is always better with the kid in the house, even when it's just for a weekend or a school break.
Summer is special, though. It's long enough where there is time for your Mustang to see all his friends. Less rush. And as they get further along into their school life, the diminishing urgency and frequency of seeing their "old" friends, leaves room for down time with the parents.
Dash is going into his senior year. He might be back here after graduation. He might move away for a job. You never know. Either way, summers are special. Cherish the moments.
And now that the barrage of well-earned (very well earned!) joy/relief/confidence of Graduation is giving way to the groundswell of anxiety/anticipation/panic from the parents of the incoming Mustangs, I find myself feeling those feelings again.
New parents: it feels like everything is changing (it is) and all your anchors and moorings are breaking loose (they are). That all that you have been used to - the predictable manageable rate of growth - is being rent asunder (it is).
That you won't be able to handle it.
You will.
Your Mustang will struggle but they'll adapt. They'll thrive. They will awe you.
You WILL wonder if you will ever have those amazing emotional moments with your child that define and inspire your life.
You will.
The certainty of continuity will be broken. That is perhaps the hardest part.
The context and the timbre will change. The ways you love your child will grown and expand as they grow and expand. This your purpose: their purpose.
You will again and repeatedly have those dull little ordinary moments - a casual conversation in the hallway in the afternoon, him changed back into his bathrobe (?!) with his headphones around his neck - that move you to tears in love and gratitude that the filial bond twenty years in the making is still there under all the superficial distraction and that initial need to break free.
You will be loved on merit and not just habit.
You will again feel and know that all is right in the world.
KNOW that.
You will feel whole again even though it might feel right now (and many times over the next year) that you are breaking apart.
You will feel whole. You will feel loved.
And when you are a mess, lean on us. Launch a bird, gain a flock. We got you.
Thank you to this group for buoying me all those times when I was a mess.