Great Joy to the New

Yesterday I watched my oldest child disappear past the security checkpoint at the Seattle International Airport.  Later, I went to bed knowing he was hurtling through the skies in a metal tube above the middling section of the Pacific Ocean.  (Have you checked Google Maps lately?  That is one hella big ocean.)  At lunch today I casually mentioned this to my youngest, what an odd feeling that was.  He nodded, but insisted that a plane is not a tube but a cylinder, as if this were a vital difference, as if the world depended on correctly identifying the type of metal container holding his brother.  

"A tube has open ends.  Also, there's only one sky.  Singular.  '...hurtling through the sky,' not 'skies.'" 

"Ah.  Okay.  Well.  It was odd."

"Indeed." 

So, after security, he boarded a Korean Air flight to Seoul, where he connected with twenty other students, and they flew on together to Chiang Mai, where they will have adventures for four months, ride elephants, explore mangrove forests, kayak, and learn about sustainable economic development.  Meanwhile we, the parents, will scan their Facebook posts and Tumblr whatchamacallits for evidence that our little darlings are still breathing and haven't contracted any dread diseases.

Okay, not really.  

But maybe. 

Not gonna lie.  I'm jealous.  Not because I'm hankering to go to Thailand, but because I'm not that brave.  And I sure as Hecuba wasn't that brave at twenty.

  

So now you're thinking, Well, dumbass, it's not about you.

True enough.  Not about me.  But here's the thing.  As a parent who has chosen a life of voluntary simplicity, who gave up opportunities and adventures and a terminal degree and a career to raise and educate her children, it's strangely uncomfortable, embarrassing almost, to have wildly successful offspring. I mean, come on!  How can I feel morally superior about all my sacrifices, my rejection of a life of privilege, if he just goes ahead and works his little buns off to live... a life of privilege?! 

But it's not about privilege, my discomfort.  And it's not jealousy, or even missing him.

All day I've been remembering this thing that happened earlier this summer, in June.  Here's how it went down.

The backstory:  I manage a concert hall on a picturesque college campus.  I spend every summer in a dark, un-air conditioned control booth running lights and sound for various conference groups that rent the space, like, say, religious youth or rock band camps,  or barbershop quartet singers, or puppeteers, or Tai Chi people, or survivors of sexual assault. You know.  The usual.

The survivors conference was new this year.  Since I don't have staff, when the conference was in the space, I was working.  That meant fourteen, sixteen hour days.  Lots of singing, praising, weeping, praying, and more praying.  And then more singing. 

One day I had a two-hour dinner break between very long, very emotional sessions.  I rode my bike home, collected my oldest, and we walked together to have dinner at our favorite spot, then he walked me back to campus.  It was almost the solstice, and so wonderful to be out of the stuffy booth and in the light.  We were walking through a neighborhood that has seen a little revival in recent years.  I was thinking out loud as we walked.

"These used to be rentals.  You can see that the new owners are really trying with the gardens.  Oh. Bad choice.  That plant is really popular right now, but it will get too big for that spot.  Hmmm.  Well.  It's a nice try, good effort, and a definite improvement, but at the end of the day, it just doesn't work."

"Well, maybe it works for them, Mom."  

"What?  I'm just saying that you can see the aesthetic they're going for here, and even though it's not my aesthetic, I can see that they're trying.  They're just not quite there yet.  Doesn't quite work."

"Again, Mom.  Maybe it works for them.  You need to expand your paradigm." 

When I told my bff about this exchange, she said, "Isn't that great?  I think it's fantastic that your kids can talk to you that way."

I guess.

I still hold that I was right about the gardens, but I think he was right about expanding the old paradigm.  If that's even a thing.  I think it is.  I didn't look it up, but I see where he was going with that.  So it's been my theme for the summer.  It's a good theme, if I may say so, for a summer that was filled with death and sadness and loss.   

As I watched my son yesterday, appearing, disappearing, reappearing, in and around and behind all those other-people's-children in that long line at the airport, I kept thinking about the paradigm conversation.  When he would look over to see me, and flash his apprehensive smile -- Don't worry, Mom, I'm okay! -- I remembered all those other times that I said goodbye to him right there at that spot.  In fact, I remembered all the goodbyes, all dear ones I've loved, the ones who have left this beautiful world, whose faces and smiles I'll never see again.  Goodbyes, the little temporary ones, and the enormous final ones, sure feel like contraction, as the heart clutches at that palpable absence. 

My friend Elizabeth told me that she imagined that the pain of loss is the pain of expansion.  I would like to think that's true, even though I hate it.  The real stinker about expanding your damn paradigm is that there isn't really any way around it, if you want to live a genuine, engaged life.  Inviting children into your world is an automatic expansion gig.  Maybe the trick is figuring out what a genuine, engaged life looks like for you, and then having the humility or gumption or whatever to get after it.  For some of us, engaged and genuine might mean riding elephants.  

Or maybe expansion itself is the privilege, and genuine and engaged living is seeing all the ways we are, most definitely, privileged.  I don't really know.  But, for me, raising those boys has been both sacrifice and privilege, contraction and expansion.  And now that one is launched into this wide mysterious world, my world is getting bigger, not smaller.  That is uncomfortable.  And terrifyingly wonderful.