We Could Go Anywhere
There’s a thought that bubbles up sometimes when I think about the twins in college: We can go wherever we want that we can afford while the twins are away. For seventeen years, we’ve been tied to their schedule — especially the school schedule — and we’re released from that for the most part.
We can go to New England for a week and work out of a hotel — just because. We don’t need a reason to go to places that make us happy.
But… instead of making me happy or excited, this thought makes me feel untethered. I’ve liked being linked to their schedule for seventeen years. I’ve liked having fall mean something. I’ve liked trying to figure out weekend plans. It has given my world structure.
Parts of my year will still move around their life. I will want to be home any time they are home, and I will want to visit them wherever they are. But there are all the Betweens; all of the weeks where we can do Anything. Yes, those words needs capital letters because they feel like they are looming over me, casting a shadow with their enormity.
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It is enormous to let them go to live on their own. The rest is just something else to focus on so you don’t really have to confront that they will be living on their own. But they’ll be OK, because you’ve raised them to be adventurous!
This reminds me a little of realising that if I wasn’t doing IVF anymore, we could do Anything. It’s grappling between the overwhelming freedom, and the changing of a part of our lives that we loved or (in my circumstances) gave us hope. (Different hope). It is what starts to make the change a little easier. Knowing that there are new opportunities you haven’t allowed yourself to think about.
My sons are only 10, and on our last few dates nights my husband has occasionally talked about things we will do together, just the two of us, when our kids are grown and we have retired. While I don’t struggle with the notion of retirement, I do find myself reluctant to think ahead to the time in my life when my sons will no longer be living with me and be a part of my daily life. So I can certainly understand how having that day in the foreseeable future could be unsettling.