The leaving is almost done. A trickle in May. A flood in July. One more rite of passage and it will be over. This is the Season of Change. Nikki graduated college. Keith graduated high school. The baby started day care. The Fellows arrived. Nikki packed up; moved away; got married.
Now, today, more leaving.
At each intersection of what was and what will be, somebody has asked me how I felt. The answer is never the same, except that it is never about regret; never resistance.
At Nikki’s graduation, I’d crept to the off-limits seats of the Lakefront Arena in New Orleans to try to get close enough for a meaningful picture. And when they called her name and she’d caught my eye as she stepped down from the stage, diploma in hand, how did I feel? I felt like a cliché. Hands trembling so badly that the picture I was there to shoot was a blur. Chest bursting with the kind of pride that compels you to turn to the other people who’ve slipped past the guard and tell them, “That’s my daughter!”
And when my son finished high school -- hallelujah, hallelujah -- when he came prancing down the aisle, arms thrust in the air, mindful always to affect the strut of untamed cool, the thing I felt was a sigh, blowing out all the exhaustion from so many days spent helping him get out of his own way so he could get to that day.
I got through Noah’s first tearful days of school because it overlapped the first days with the Fellows.
And now, the leaving.
I’ve neither feared nor embraced the notion of the empty nest. That kind of worry is for people who would waste time fearing the sunrise; people who haven’t surrendered to the superiority of the second hand; people who don’t know the thrill behind the question, “What happens next?”
Babies should not remain babies, no matter how much that serves my need to be needed.
So they should leave if only to punctuate my sense of success. Thus, the leaving. Which means that someone has succeeded. Someone has grown.
Older.
How does it feel?
Well, it feels natural, I told the people at the wedding reception when I toasted Nikki and Shawn.
“There’s the moment,” I told them, “when I’m running beside her bicycle and the wheel’s wobbling; when I’m trying to catch her on the steps of her middle school to steal one last kiss for daddy before adolescence pushes me away; when she’s leaving on her first date or flying alone to Africa; when I’m driving her to college or watching her drive away with all her possessions and many of our memories stuffed into boxes, headed for a new life in Cleveland; these moments when I know that if my Nikki ... is to become the glorious woman that God intended for her to be, then I’ve got to let go.”
So it feels, this leaving, as necessary as it is inexorable, which may explain why I’ve only cried in private lately when pride or nostalgia or loss has squeezed out a tear or clamped down on my vocal chords so strongly that my voice cracked. The other times, I’m filled with the peace you’d find in a passage of Eastern philosophy I carry around in my bag: “If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.”
So the Season of Transition is just change by many names. Nikki, then Keith, then Noah. Now Bob, Rebecca, Roberto, Millie, Michaela, Nancy, Angie, Angela, Amber, Adam Kushner, Adam Cairns, Kathryn, Kristi, Chris, Jozie, Edmund, Lucy, Liz, Matt, Mike Kane, Jack, Peter, Mike Finch, Mike Martina, Morgan, Erica, Kelly, Javi, Hari, Dustin, Dave, Diego, Frances, Debby.
Yes. They’ll go. But the way I see it, each person who leaves my present is off to find a place in my future. A future source? A future friend? A future mentor? Who, am I, then, to resent the leaving.
As I sat still and agenda-less on Thursday night, Angie asked: What’s next for you?
Leaving, mostly. Off to Cleveland. To Dallas. To New York. To Tallahassee to take my oldest son to college. It’s the last rite in this season of change. We’ll move him into his dormitory room. Set into motion his transition into adulthood. Say a dry-eyed goodbye, and move on.
Then I’m taking a few days off. I won’t leave town. I may not leave the house. In fact, I may not even leave the bathroom. The new Season of Change will involve diapers.
Noah needs to be potty trained.