The Long Letting Go
Monday, September 14, 2009 at 3:20PM Twenty years ago, at my senior prom, my friends and I danced to "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS.
We were optimistic. Naive too. I lost touch with all but one of my friends from high school.
College, travel, opportunities, age, time. It all helped tear us apart.
I've been thinking of old classmates and dear friends long forgotten over the past several months as my 20-year reunion approaches. I misplaced my brain several years ago and the bulk of my childhood memories a few years before that. But I do recall that song and the earnestness of its refrain:
"And they could never tear us apart."
What made me think of the song recently, though, wasn't the close of one school chapter but the start of another.
A few weeks before Esme started kindergarten, she blew a dandelion on a walk to the coffee shop. I asked what she wished for. "That I get everything I want," she said. I told her that sounded a bit greedy and wondered if there was anything else she might want. "That I don't have to go to school."
I was surprised. She'd been talking about school for months. She was looking forward to the bus and chocolate milk in the cafeteria, recess and big kids. She did daily fashion shows in her uniform and modeled the different outfits - spring, winter, P.E. - for every visitor to the house.
Given all the outward signs of excitement, I asked why she didn't want to go. "So I can stay home with my family," she said.
Esme has been my constant companion for the past five years. She went to preschool but only for three hours at a time. And not every day of the week. I can count on two hands the nights I've spent away from her, including three when the twins were born.
I cried as I labored with them because I missed Esme so terribly. Admittedly, it could have been the pain too.
She and I share a crazy strong bond that Kent remarks upon often. It's like we're tapped into each other's heads. Frequently, she will notice something totally random or obscure - the color of a house, the shape of a cloud, a berry in a tree - and comment at precisely the moment the thought forms in my head.
It might be cool if it wasn't so spooky.
When Esme was about 22 months old, we sat across from each other at a sandwich shop. My head was woozy from the twins inside my belly and I was eating potato chips to settle the nausea. We looked at our food and folks passing by the window beside us. We looked at each other. We didn't speak. She reached her hand across the table and put it on top of mine. We sat like that for a while. In silence.
Esme and I are the same kind of quiet. The same kind of curious. The same kind of strange. The same kind of vulnerable.
Lots of parents breathe a sigh of relief when school starts because it means a few hours during the day to get chores done and think without chaos.
But for me, it means time away from someone whose company I adore, whose conversation I appreciate, whose observations I look forward to. Eight hours a day. Five days a week. That's a lot of lost time.
Recently, I wrote about the fading of summer into autumn, my favorite season. I surprised myself when I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was more sad about what's passing than excited about what's coming. I couldn't figure out why.
Eventually, I did.
I'm over the moon about Esme's new adventures and super excited for her to start this remarkable journey. But I'm also mourning the loss of her in my day. I'm mourning the acceleration of the tearing apart.
After all, the start of the long letting go began five years ago, the day she was born.
Reader Comments (3)
Speechless. Sobbing.
You mentioned your 20-year reunion and I immediately started composing a comment about mine, and it was FUNNY. But I kept reading, and you ripped my heart out. Great post, seriously.
Yes, I'm sobbing too. You are so right! I felt so much the same way when my girls went off to school. Eventually, we homeschooled, but the tearing apart happens anyway. Our 28 year old daughter, the oldest, and second to marry, got married last weekend to a wonderful man. And still her father (most of all!) and I wept at the event. It just never goes away, even when they are all grown up! The bonds are forever, but they are different.