Far From The Nest

My son Noah and his girlfriend Momay

I am still adjusting to having my son visit me.  No, it’s not like you think, I mean sometimes I just want him to stay.  Being a visitor still seems odd and when he leaves I still feel his presence only to realize he is gone.  Life is scary that way.  Each time he visits I know that the circumstances of life will pull us further apart.  Girlfriends, studies and future plans.  The process is entirely natural but it is still hard.  I wonder if animals ever miss their young or are humans the only ones.  I know my dog seems to miss me when I am gone.  Perhaps the apes join us in our despondency, I have a feeling they might.  Still their youth never leave for college and seldom strike out to new continents where they will make their way.  

My life is a blessing and a social curse.  A blessing in that it has taken me to different ends of the earth and allowed me to live there.  To constantly feel different stimulation and to expand my life in new and unpredictable ways.   I crave that.  I don’t like stagnation and I become restless easily.  The counter is that I leave miles in the wake of those that I love.  Lives do not flow in synch.  Each has its own trajectory.  Some are quiet and sedentary, others fly like a rocket.  Seldom are we like waves moving in tandem with the ones we care for.  In reality we are like fireworks exploding as we shoot out in different directions.  

When you grow older and you have children there is a lot of trepidation about today, tomorrow and the future.   You try to find a balance in lives where our young find their own ways yet still are not so distant.  The ties that bound us in the past linger and we don’t want them to leave our lives.  Still we understand a need for them to chart their own course.

Noah and his mom

I think as we approach our own retirements we are enticed by the thought that we can share more time again with our children however, it is precisely at the moment that their time becomes much more difficult to manage.  They are just establishing themselves and finding their own lives and place in the world.  We think about trying to locate our own lives closer to them but we also realize that their paths, their trajectories are completely unknown.   I guess as our children emerge from their cocoons leaving strands of thread we attempt to weave the blanket that will cover us for the rest of our lives.  We soon find our hearts torn as we long for the little ones that once walked with us holiding our hands.  

In many ways I am a victim of my own wanderings.  I could have chosen a path that would have left me close to home, one that perhaps would have fostered children that would never stray so far from me.  Instead, I raised a son in my own shadow who like I 30 years before, is seeking his life and relationships in foreign lands.   Sometimes the thought makes me sad, sometimes it leaves me happy.  Mostly I just feel proud of the man he is becoming.  

Life is filled with movements that often take us far away from those we love.  I wish I had answers but sadly I have none.  I don’t know if distance creates stronger ties or divides us.  I don’t know how to reconcile personal growth against love and relationships.  In my own life I have probably failed many times.  I comfort myself with the thought that nothing is exclusionary of the other yet I still wonder what light will emerge from the darkness as the years pass.  I suppose the questions left to resolve is what stimulates us through life.

“The most important thing I inherited from my parents was not money or fortune but my aptitude for independence” - Sonya Park, creative director and owner, Arts & Science