FLYING BACKWARDS!

 An hour ago my daughter moved away.  She is the last of my three children to do so.  I would rather be writing about her, about how lovely, gracious, beautiful and unnaturally wise she is and how profoundly I will miss her presence in the every day of my life, but she has asked that I not write about her in my blogs, and so apart from this necessary introduction, I will continue to respect her wishes.  

But my heart is breaking off just a bit now, and will not fully accept silence until I mention how much I love her.  

She and I are very much alike and she'd often refer to herself as my 'sequel' after we'd spent another marathon of hours conversing about life, being, purpose, faith, and love in a deeply reflective and philosophical manner which most people would consider over-thinking.  But to us it is life-bringing.

Last night after a full day of loading the contents of their apartment onto the Uhaul, she wanted us all to go to the movies to see a new comedy that was just released. We sat together in the dark theater flanked by our husbands and where once our arms would be linked and our heads inclined in conspiratorial laughter, this honor now went to her husband.  And as I watched them leaning into and upon each other and their hands as they remained clasped tightly together throughout the movie, I knew she was going to be alright in this new life of hers.

And this morning when they drove away just after sunrise, in spite of the tears that quite naturally fell and the part of me that she took with her, tucked inside the corners of her dreams for the future and her memories of the past; I knew I was going to be alright, too.  It is all part of the gig; the flight school of life.

Who am I?  When do I officially become old?  If I am no longer mothering, should I say I'm retired?   

How does one negotiate a successful departure from hands-on domesticity to that of a maternally-funded remote viewer?  

Should I have known this was coming and have padded the void with more solid, long-term distractions well beforehand?  Am I thinking too much?

All last night these questions droned through the background of my mind like the uneasy chatter between strangers on a train straining to hear one another over the productive noise of locomotion.

The monotonous undertone in the restless murmuring of all these unresolved thoughts gripped my body in a tense hold of anxiety until my pillow felt like the steel side of a boxcar, and all I could do was go along for the ride and pray I reached the station of full consciousness at daybreak.  I struggled to get this iron horse airborne. 

However, this is not a routine nocturnal condition and I attribute it to my current stage in life; the one that now surfaces as the sum total of past actions, and the unrealized personal visions which have been necessarily sublimated by a demanding life of conformity and cooperation.

A life that presently rests at the halfway station between pride and regret and thrives on the indecision that dwells in the space between habit and hope.

It was a similar, purgative pause between what has been and what could still be that settled around me, as I walked back into the empty house early this morning after watching my daughter and her husband drive their U-haul off into the world and their new home several states away.

And now for the first time since gravity turned against me, I am forced to reconsider my options; fully recognizing the diminishing potential for making changes, if I don't act quickly.

Unlike the last time I faced such expansive choices decades earlier, the years have advanced enough to clearly reflect their gravitational consequence on my form narrowing my physiological margins. 

Fortunately, they have had quite the opposite effect on my mind and inner countenance and have only heightened my enthusiasm.

Of course, there is the fear whose presence is now more obvious and challenging without the worried enterprises of maternal and domestic obligations to distract me; the ones that once forced my heart to cower in shame for considering 'self' over 'family' and for the idea of forging an identity which was solely my own.

But now without those very real and valid priorities of motherhood and domestic arbitration, there is nothing to prevent me from taking those willful strides into autonomous action.  Is there?

Well....is there?

For the first time in nearly twenty eight years not one of my three children is living either at home or in close physical proximity to me, and I find myself greeting this upcoming passage with a confounding mixture of absolute ecstasy and a niggling sidedish of abject terror.

On the one hand I am thrilled at the prospect of re-acquainting myself with myself and investing the majority of my time and energy into my Work (whatever that is); yet on the other, these are  the very things that terrify me because I know that by engaging them, my life will morph into something else and there will be no turning back once it does.

In those early years of marriage and motherhood I found myself in an internal struggle because I could not fulfill my personal dreams as an artist, poet or writer and be the kind of interested and available mother that I wanted to be for my children.

I kept up with my artwork, filled journals with my ramblings, and took on the occasional freelance illustration job only to the point that it would not interfere with my availability to my family.  

It was enough to keep me from imploding.

Yet it also took me years to settle my restlessness enough to stop focusing on some sublimely creative future that could exist for me once they were all grown and even more time to banish the brooding undertow of artistic discontent until I finally was able to be that kind of mom.

But I did it.

Was it a sacrifice?  I suppose in a way it was, but because I loved my kids more than what I dreamed to do, it really didn't feel like one at the time.

So now what?

I feel like The Fool in the Tarot.

The Fool represents new beginnings and the unknown but also the elements of impulsivity and risk.  The illustration shows a figure walking with his head held high, eyes half closed carrying a stick and satchel (his worldly possessions) and holding a rose. The sun is behind him and a frolicking dog is at his heels.

He looks to be the epitome of carefree abandon and joie de vive, until you realize that he is blithely unaware that his next step will take him off the edge of a high precipice, possibly to his death.

But possibly not.

We aren't really privy to the entire picture and for all the viewer knows, what we assume is the edge of a cliff could very well be only a small gap between the ground he is on and another patch that we cannot see.

This, of course, is the whole meaning and promise of The Fool.  It is the ability to take risks with the innocent trust of a child and the deep knowing that everything will be alright if you have faith.

It is also a warning to us not to merely assume that the future will support our dreams just because we want it to but that there needs to be some practical planning; a road map or, at the very least, a compass and an extra bottle of spring water.

I've got a lot to process in the coming weeks and months now that I've launched these crazy birds of mine out of this tidy but dysfunctional nest.

Still,  I have faith that we will all take to the skies like naturals.

Fear and failure are not options for any of us despite the naysayers who try to hold us down.

My husband has a saying that I've never liked but one I've heard repeatedly directed at either myself or the kids:

"If a bird had your brain, it would fly backwards."

I never knew quite how to respond to that.

But in the growing clarity of this blessed silence and with the ever-expanding view through my endless hope;  in my opinion, that would be one friggin' awesome bird.

And now if you will please excuse me, I have some latent soaring to do.

Up, up and away...........