I've been wondering lately what's wrong with me? Why is it so hard for me to let my two oldest children (and only sons) leave home to go to a university less than an hour from my home? It's not as though my nest is empty -- I still have at least eight years of hands-on parenting left with two daughters at home. It's a bittersweet thing, but usually more bitter than sweet.
Then tonight it hit me as I emerged from a movie -- the reason it is so difficult is that I have enjoyed this chapter of my life so much that I don't want it to end. I don't even really want it to change significantly, even though logically I know it will and it must. My boys have to move on, so I have to move on, too. We're all learning and growing.
And even though I have to accept it as some sort of biological imperative, it's okay for me to accept it reluctantly.
Robert Frost understood, as evidenced by this final stanza of his poem "Reluctance":
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
1 comment:
You hit the nail on the head baby--I think I may be finally emerging from my happiest "chapter" and moving onward--but I stall way too often.
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