Motherhood and the Back-to-College Blues

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/opinion/children-college-empty-nest.html

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NASHVILLE — It is dusk in August, and the voices of the robins fill the air. All spring I watched these birds building their nests and raising their nestlings, those sharp-eyed babies making harsh, monosyllabic demands. All summer I watched the robins teaching their fledglings to flutter up from the ground and into the tree limbs, or at least the inner branches of a dense shrub, as quickly as they could. Now the young birds have grown past the one-note call of desperation they made under their parents’ care. All the robins, young and old, are singing the same song now. At twilight it is a mournful sound — something less than heartbreaking, something more than melancholy.

Or maybe this edging sadness has nothing to do with robins. Summer is ending, and my younger sons — the only two still at home even part of the year — are heading back to college, and I can hardly bear to see them go.

When they were younger, the connection I felt to them was visceral. During those early days of carrying a child — in my body or in my arms — I came to feel like one-half of a symbiotic relationship. It’s been years since then, but motherhood still thrums within me like a pulse. My youngest child is 20 years old and 6 feet tall, but still I catch myself swaying whenever I’m standing in a long line, soothing the ghost baby fussing in my arms.

I haven’t forgotten how exhausting it was to be the parent of young children or how often I was frustrated by the close rooms and constricted plans of our lives in those days. I haven’t forgotten how repetitive that life was, how often I felt unable to draw a deep breath.

And yet I sometimes let myself imagine what a gift it would be to start all over again with this man, with these children, to go back to the beginning and feel less restless this time, less eager to hurry my babies along. Why did I spend so much time watching for the next milestone when the next milestone never meant the freedom I expected? There will be years and years to sleep, I know now, but only the briefest weeks in which to smell a baby’s skin as he nestles into my neck on dark, sleepless nights.

Summer is ending, and my own nest is emptying again. Metaphors of loss are everywhere. The limping old dog who was my sons’ perfect childhood companion died last month, and now I take my after-supper walk alone. I watch the sun dropping behind my neighbors’ houses, and I listen to the robins’ song. It’s too late for most songbirds and too early for owls. The robins have the stage to themselves in this margin between light and dark. Summer is going, and daylight is going, and now my children are on their way again as well.

Already they are packing the minivan we bought when the youngest was in second grade. The house that all summer has been loud with life will fall almost silent. My husband and I will drive them to their dorms on the other side of the state, take a few minutes to unload, and then turn around to head home again. I will lift a hand as we pull out, though I know they will already be turning away, turning toward their beckoning new life. It has been years since the last time they looked back after leaving a car.

This is what we raised them for, and I’m grateful for their independence, for the interesting lives they’re making for themselves in the world. I will adjust again to the quiet, and be grateful for the freedom it brings. In a few days they will call to check in; their brother will drop by; they’ll be home for the holidays before I know it. While they are away, I’ll be living my own full and busy life, just as they are living theirs.

And yet this sense of loss keeps murmuring in my ear. It says nothing so simple as “Your children are leaving, and you will miss them terribly.” Instead it hisses, “All the things you learned and all the ways you changed as their mother — what will you do with them now?”

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