She’s left the nest

Watch out world, here she comes!

My daughter is newly planted in San Francisco, settled into her dorm and navigating the change skillfully. It was an uneasy transition—would she go? Would the last minute be me wrangling her away from her summer bliss, she kicking her very long legs as I pressed her into the loaded truck? 

There were a few hiccups that indicated it might go that way, but the morning it was time to drive away, after she came home at 4:01am, I nervously knock at 7:40. 

“Honey?” 

Nothing. Corpse-like, unmoving lump in bed. 

“Honey?” I repeat myself several times to no avail. I touch her shoulder. 

“Honey? It’s 7:40, time to go. We said we were going to leave at 8. How can I help you get up and into the truck?” 

A grunt. She’s stretching one of those long legs further than it seems possible—didn’t she used to fit inside the crook of my arm? 

And then. . . “Hi, mama” as she raises herself to elbows, bottom, feet. 

It’s happening. She stands in front of me. I’m so scared she will refuse to go. So scared she will fall apart at this last moment of leaving. . . or that I will. 

But instead, she puts comfy clothes on without protest, looks around the apartment that has been our temporary home, just the two of us, for this final year of childhood. She tears up and hugs me and then quietly gets into the truck idling in the driveway. 

And away we go. . . 

I wish I could report to you that since I dropped her off I feel. . . well, anything identifiable. I don’t know what I feel. I feel like I am blinded by crystal prisms reflecting piercing morning light. Every direction I turn there is another color, another feeling, too sharp and brilliant to identify or feel before the another shard of light seers my eyes. 

What do I do? Just stand here blinded by the light until the sun crosses the sky? Maybe. 

People have said to me many times over the last years that I am running a marathon: a very long, grueling journey requiring unnatural levels of stamina. So I googled, “What happens after you run a marathon?” This is what I found: 

The Post Marathon Blues, also referred to as PMS for Post Marathon Syndrome is fairly common. You focus intently on a lofty goal for day after day, week after week, month after month, and suddenly that goal is snatched away. You can look back with pleasure, but what’s next in life?

My takeaway from this very short and to the point article is that I just need to trick my brain with distraction for 5 weeks in whatever way I need to, and by then I should be able to think rationally again.

For eighteen years I have focused on one lofty goal: raise the child / survive. It’s been my constant beacon, my motivation, my buoy when I could barely take care of myself. When I just wanted to let go and give up, I couldn’t. I had to get up and get through. Raising her gave me the “have to” and the “why” for all endeavors. I wouldn’t be an irresponsible mother. I wouldn’t fail her. 

What’s next in life? 

I guess for now, I will trust that those sparkling colors are some kind of personal transformation, or an uncomfortable distraction, or just my brain reorganizing to set a new goal. Possibly, in just a few more weeks, I’ll be able to think rationally again.