![]() My youngest daughter moved out. They are both gone. The room at the end of the hall is a wispy, spooky, ghost town trying to get my attention. I don’t go in. It's the biggest bedroom in the apartment. What will it be now? First it held my new baby and a crib, a changing table and a rocker. It was serene and beautiful, and it held me through this enormous change in my life. I liked sitting in there more than any other room. Then two little girls, new paint, twin beds, toys everywhere, two dressers, a small table. Everything pressing on the walls. Then back to the oldest when they got too big to share, paint again, double bed, bigger dresser, adult-size desk, computer, big ideas and longings hanging in the air and decorating the walls. And finally, after the oldest flew, the youngest's room for the last few years, alternately adult-neat and chaotic -- clothes everywhere, a thousand beauty products cluttering the surfaces, and her sweet nest of a bed. I push back the overwhelm that I have landed here. Empty room. Two grown children; people on their own. I looked at them all the time when they were little imagining this time, imagining who they would be, and also knowing it was unknowable. My chest is clinched. I have to keep relaxing my muscles so I can get a deep breath. The worst time is late at night when the fears and would-be tragedies pile up, one on top of the other, until my heart is pounding. Love. Fear. Time. Now, let’s be honest, are those late night terrors new? No, they’ve just taken on a new color and proportion. It’s been a gradual process, of course, them becoming viable adults, but this last tie has been stretching and stretching, so thin, almost imperceptible, hanging on as long as it could. I knew. Of course I’m proud and happy for them, but that’s not what this is about. This is about the me that stands here feeling struck. I’m done. Motherhood is not over. It never is. There will be much more time spent and conversations had and life exchanged. But it’s done in a particular way, a twenty-plus year job completed. Well done. What the hell? My ego comes roaring at me, as it does, so confident and boisterous (she’s something); no, no, no, you’re not just a mother, you’re an artist, that is your identity, that is your worth. This is supposed to make me feel better.... Slow down. Please. Be quiet for a moment. Stare at the bare trees. Let me think. I gave myself to this job, to my children unflinchingly, consistently, because I knew in the beginning if I didn’t, if I wavered, they would feel it. They wouldn’t know what is was, the bracing chill of not being mothered, but they’d feel it. Also, it simply made me very happy to be with them. And I fell more and more in love. So I let the love wash over me and spill out of me and take over – and now…. I’m different for it. That angry, roaring girl who never got what I gave to my girls is still present, insistent. That girl was convinced fame and fortune would right her wrongs. Oops. I hear even the famous and fortunate don’t feel better sitting on their piles of gold and adoration if they haven’t calmed the little girls inside them with something more tangible. Hmmm. Some people or some voice in my head might say, “Well, Linda, now you’ve got all the time for yourself… you avoiding that perhaps?” Love. Fear. Time. Alright, I’ll dig in further to the making of art and the potential poetry in the day to day. Perhaps the freezing up as I stare down the hall at that empty room is the profundity of it all stopping me in my tracks, the big life we’ve had together down in that room stopping me in my tracks, the love that I was capable of stopping me in my tracks. |
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