My oldest is about to graduate from college this year, and I have been thinking about the process of nurturing and letting go. I wrote this a number of years ago, when he went off to sleep-away camp for the first time. Funny, to me it doesn’t seem so long ago.
***************************************
Daniel
Absence
Is an ache
Not like the active toothache
But like the way your tongue keeps working a spot
Where the tooth is gone,
The way your jaw remembers that place.
The pain isn’t stabbing or shooting
But constant
A sense of loss
Of being missed
Of something that was so much a part of you
That its absence makes clear
Just how essential.
You grow so fast, so far away.
I cleaned your closet in your absence
Finding old treasures, long forgotten,
Finding the badges of your courage,
Achingly.
The letting go is hard–
Harder than I thought.
But the joy in the progress, the growth,
The glimmers of the man you will become,
Make me hopeful.
So I sit with tears now
That I can’t tell you about.
Tears after the heartfelt hug you gave
In spite of wanting to be macho in front of your friends.
Tears when I heard your tiny brother
Sigh deeply and say,
“I miss Daniel ’cause I love him.”
A boy too big to kiss his mom in public
But young enough to sneak
Stuffed animals into bed.
My gentle, temperamental son,
I miss you too
And love you.
Camp helps me to grow up too.
(c) Lydia A. Schultz
Leave a comment
Comments feed for this article