Part III: Long Distance Transition

Sunday, August 17th: As M drives us home from the airport late on Sunday evening after leaving Boston, I ask M if he thinks there is something that I could have done differently as a mother. Yeah, I know. It is a little too late to want to make up for eighteen years of motherhood.

I take a deep breath and recognize that my relationship with K is now changing because of physical location. I have to accept the distance as part of the change, but know that we still love each other just as much; that our relationship hasn’t changed at the core of being mother and daughter. She knows that I would drop anything and fly to her in an instant, if needed. I also have to give her the space to be on her own. Thank goodness for email, texting, and cell phones. Now- a -days, the dorms do not even have phones. Students are expected to have cell phones. I think back to the long distance calls I made from a rotary dial in my dorm room to my own parents once a week in 1985 when I left for college. I was only 90 minutes away from home, yet I felt just as far away from home as Boston does now.

***
I ask M if he was aware of his mother’s feelings when he left for college. He went in-state just 90 minutes away, but didn’t go home until Thanksgiving. He explains that he was ready for college and that it was normal to want to be away from home. He never looked back. He was the baby of the family so I am sure it was hard on Helen, his mom, to have him leave. He remembers that she tried to get him to stay; that she didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t have the most loving marriage, yet M thinks that eventually, his leaving home did help his father and mother grow closer. His parents started doing more together; taking walks, going to estate sales, etc. M never did go back home. After college, he moved to Colorado. And somehow his mother got used to having her family in different places; though, she never talked it how it felt at first; how she dealt with the change. It wasn’t until she was 73, just three years after her husband died that she moved out to Colorado and lived just 30 minutes from two of her sons. Yet, as much as she had hoped to live near her children again, it was a hard move for her after living 50 years in the same house and her whole life in the same town.

***
During the first week K is gone, we all have to adjust to the fact she isn’t going to walk through the door at any minute from a Civil Air Patrol meeting or swim practice. D has to have 6 baby teeth pulled the first morning back so as I drive him to the dentist, he exclaims, “It isn’t fair that we can’t talk to K this week.” D’s adult teeth weren’t dissolving the roots of his baby teeth as they came up to the side of his baby teeth so we have to remove the baby teeth in order to prepare for braces. After the teeth are pulled, I drive home trying to watch the road and keep an eye on the bloody drool that leaks out of his still-numb mouth. He is pale and still in shock. When I first see him in the dentist’s chair, he is shaking.
He mumbles, “When will I feel my face again?”
“In a few hours; here hold this tissue to your mouth. We can’t change the gauze until we get home.” The 20-minute drive feels slow. “Do you want a milkshake?” I calculate the time and hope that the bleeding will stop soon before the gauze soaks through.
He nods and states, “You didn’t tell me the Novocain was a shot.”
“Well, no.” I look over at him to see if he is upset. “I decided it would hurt less if I only told you it would feel like a pinch. Was I right?”
“Yeah. It was just a pinch,” he confirms. He falls into silence.
“See, you have now had a shot that didn’t hurt. You can no longer say you are afraid of all needles.”When D was seven, we were trying to rule out various conditions beyond Autism so his doctor requested blood work for “Fragile X Syndrome”. In hind sight, I should have protested such an out-of-the-norm test, but at the time, we wanted to rule out any causes for his learning and social challenges. My husband and I didn’t know that the nurse would take at least six vials of blood, if not more; I can no longer remember how many beyond remembering having to hold D down as he screamed. As a result, we now have a son who is terrified of needles, and I really can’t blame him. D spends the rest of the afternoon resting and that night he sleeps in K’s room. The day after D’s teeth are pulled, he starts eighth grade, and we start our new school routine for autumn without K in the house.

****
I continue on with my busy week at work because if I completely honest I know that nobody will understand if my “emotions” of missing K disrupts my productivity. I am expected to maintain my work ethic regardless of how I feel about my daughter being gone. Sometimes in life, it seems that there is no room for emotions in our society; that we are told to dismiss our feelings or put them aside until a better time. Does a better time ever really come? How does one prepare for loss? Some things just have to be experienced. Growth happens through experience. I felt this same frustration of having to put my emotions aside when my mother-in-law, Helen, passed away last December. The timing was the worst. She passed away at the end of the semester right before finals so after a few days away at the funeral in Indiana, I had to ignore my emotions and bunker down to get grades done. It is just the way things are. Work continues; grades continue; life continues on around you, even if you want a temporary break to gather yourself together; to figure out how to live with such a permanent change. It is expected that as a professional, that one will not let one’s life get in the way of work. It begins to my mind the vision of compartmentalizing – putting each facet of my life into separate rooms and being careful when I open the door to examine what I am experiencing in each of the areas of my life.
As time goes on, some things are easier to compartmentalize. With Helen, my adjustment to her absence has had to be permanent, but after 10 months, I am doing better most of the time. My weepiness now only seems to appear when we try to go to church because taking Helen to Mass most Saturday evenings was part of our family routine.

I really didn’t think I was linking my feelings of loss at K’s “leaving” home with my feelings of loss of Helen’s passing, but as I write, I am aware of the similarity in theme. I am aware that I wish I could talk to Helen about how she let her children go off to college knowing they would never be home in the same way again. At least with K, I am thankful that my feelings of loss are not permanent – we are just experiencing a temporary relocation and will adjust to this change. I can still experience life with her near or far. There are still phone calls, emails, text messages, and yet-to-come visits.

And let me exclaim, I honestly wouldn’t want her to stay at home and would be angry with her for limiting her opportunities by staying close. I love the fact that she is in Boston experiencing a big city at this time in her life. I love the adventures she has in store for herself. If she had stayed at home or even stayed in the state, I would have been disappointed because I know she needs to spread her wings. I know she is capable of so much. I want her to share her extraordinary specialness with the world. I will learn so much from her.

I know she will read this entry so while I don’t want to hide my emotions from her, I don’t want the expression my “missing her” to make her feel bad. I am so very happy for her. I know that I will adjust and that my relationship with her will be even stronger and we will grow even closer. She knows that regardless of where she lives, I’ll still be close in thought and will come to her if she needs me. We will just keep growing closer and what is occurring is a natural part of life.

***
On K’s birthday we each call her and wish her a happy birthday. She will not get the messages until a week later, but at least she will know we are thinking of her. I spend her birthday in meetings with thoughts of her birth creeping into my thoughts once in awhile. K’s birth is a story in itself. She was born 8 weeks early. So every year of her birthday, I thank God for her survival at a time when the hospital would not even take her newborn picture because she was in the neonatal intensive care unit and they didn’t take pictures of babies who might not live. Even then, as a newborn, I knew she was strong. The doctors kept warning me that she might have to stay in the hospital for at least 8 weeks, if not more. The doctors didn’t want me getting my hopes up. After I was released, I would wake up at 5 and drive downtown to the hospital to spend the day with her. At least I could only watch her in her incubator; then, I would hold all 4 lbs of her for hours. She learned how to eat, gained and maintained the necessary weight she needed to show them she was ready to go home, and came home after just 2 weeks. While she doesn’t remember her first couple of weeks, I know as a mother, she is tough. She is a survivor. She has survived far worse than what she is going through at In-Doc. Perhaps that unconscious memory will provide the strength she needs at this time.

***
Finally on Sunday, August 24th, M drives me to the airport at 5:30 in the morning for my return flight to Boston. He is working that day at the airport and he agrees to come get me when I return on Thursday evening. He knows that I will want his company when I get back. I talk about how I wish he were coming with me and how as much as I like to travel with him, I don’t enjoy traveling alone as much.
He jokes, “I think it is because you like me.”
“Yeah, I might even love you,” I tease back.
I was never prepared for what it would feel like to have my child go off to college. Even my mom couldn’t help with this one as I didn’t go out-of-state. Yet, I wrote in my journal that first month of college about how homesick I was. We adjusted. Just like I know next year at this time, the feeling won’t be as raw. We will both be used to our new arrangement by then.

***
I spend the first few days in Boston with my friend, T because I can’t see K until noon on Wednesday. I try not to rush the time while I anxiously wait to talk to K again. T and I take walks, and I imagine what it would be like to live in New England. On Wednesday, T and I arrive on campus just short of noon and hurriedly look for a parking spot on a busy move-in day. As I quickly walk towards the building, I see K walking down Bay Street with her NROTC group. She doesn’t see me because she is looking straight ahead. She looks so different in her uniform; older; more serious that I am stunned. My eyes well up with tears. She looks changed. This is not a negative statement. It is just a realization. She has obviously been through a lot these past 10 days and looks more mature. T and I proceed to the backyard of the Navy Brownstone to wait with the other parents for our children to march up.

As soon as they finish their march, I make eye contact and hug her close; my emotions are on the surface. She stands straighter. Her voice is horse from shouting commands. She sits at the picnic table and starts to tell us about the experience. She explains that she called the first night and left a message at home because she didn’t want to talk to me. It would have been too hard.

The Day of Departure: Thursday, August 28th
Today T, K, and I eat lunch at Charlie’s on Newberry St. We eat outside on a shaded front patio enjoying the perfect summer day of sun, blue skies, temperatures in the 70’s and a light breeze to whisk away the humidity.

K comments, “This is like Pearl Street on steroids.” Pearl Street is an outside mall in Boulder lined with shops and outside restaurant patios.
I joke with K that I have decided to follow her; that I too want to live In Boston.
“Mom, when I knew I was leaving home, I never knew home would be coming with me.”
Okay; point taken. She wants her space, and I want her to love her new home. It is time for me to go. I say good-bye to her and watch her wave from the yard of her dorm. I am rushing to the airport to see if I can get an earlier flight home so that I can arrive home before midnight.
“You can cry, if you want to…” T says as she drives me towards the airport.
“No. I’m okay.” I don’t want to start crying now. I might not stop, and I have over seven hours of travel ahead of me as I prepare for my lay-over in Chicago. The tears wait until the next evening. On the way home I see 3 people dressed in different Navy attire. I want to go up to them and tell them about K, but I just stay in my seat not even sure what I would say. I would babble on like a mom about how proud I am of her. I’m returning home to my husband and son without K. We all have to accept transition… the process of getting older and letting the next stage of life begin. Now, I just have to figure out this new stage… as K writes, “the next chapter.”

Author Note: I've debated for the past week whether or not to post this entry. I even talked to K about it. This entry felt extremely personal and rough, and I am not sure if anybody will really understand so I started to feel really subconscious about what I had said. But once again, for better or worse, I'm putting my thoughts out there because I have reached a point in my life where I feel like I have to acknowledge who I am and what I feel regardless of what others think. This is my journey - rough drafts and all. :)