Yesterday I dropped my oldest child, Ryan, at Logan Airport for a school service trip to Jamaica. He is a sophomore at St. John's Prep in Danvers, MA and will be working at a Mustard Seed Community in Kingston, Jamaica for five days. While I am extraordinarily proud of him, I am feeling a bit selfish. It will be the first time in 15 years I will not speak with him or see him everyday and I am not sure I like it very much.
When Ryan was a baby, my father-in-law said to me that children were not ours forever, they are only on loan to us from God until they grow up. I am not sure of the exact wording, but it was along those lines. At the time, I thought it was a very mean thing to say. Here I was, a brand new mother, holding my perfect, beautiful new baby and he was telling me he was only on loan. Why would he say such a thing? Wasn't this little bundle of joy going to be mine forever? I could not imagine a time when Ryan would not need me, want me, be with me - forever. Of course he would always be mine. But in what capacity?
Now that time has passed, he has grown up and I have grown wiser, I have begun to understand the words my father-in-law uttered all those years ago. Our children are on loan, in the form of a gift from God. They are ours to love and nurture from the day they are born, but until when? Is this trip the beginning of the end of the acute phase of my mothering him? I know he still needs me, but the job description has changed drastically over the past year. Up until recently, it was a gradual change through the various phases of child rearing. Now, I feel like we are riding a tidal wave that will crash on the shore the day I drop him at college. There is nothing subtle about the four years of high school. There is a gradual build-up to freshman year, then the power of the wave takes over. It travels very quickly and can be quite dangerous. They are surfing down the face and you are on the crest trying to hold on and guide them safely away from the dangerous white water. All the while, your control is getting more tenuous, just like the the wave beneath you.
My younger son, Alec who is just shy of 12, just said to me "it's quiet this week without Ryan". Yes it is. Aside from the usual noise between siblings, Ryan is an avid musician. Piano, guitar, trumpet, there is always some instrument in the background that is the soundtrack to our lives. I always told him I will miss his piano playing when he goes. I hate always being right. The house is eerily quiet.
I wrote last time about how being a mom is work and we are no different than women who work outside the home. The advantage they have over stay at home moms is this - moms that work outside the home finish a project and then get another one to do from their boss. When I finish my "Ryan" project, there will be no replacement. I will still have Betsy and Alec home, but like their big brother, they are a project that when completed at age 18, there will be no replacement. Then I will be out of work. Oh I know they will always need me on some level, just as I always needed my mom until the day God called her home. But I will no longer be at the center of their world, just as this week I am not in the center of Ryan's.
My oldest son is a freshman in college so we've been in the throes of adjustment for the past several months. I was just thinking about how I'm still not really "done" with him, there's still projects and problems and joys to share. He's growing up and will grow away but I hope he'll always be just a little bit tied to us too.
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