I have so loved being a parent. It was something I wanted from the youngest age, but as much as I anticipated it, I could never have grasped just how much fun it was going to be, what a joyful ride. We all get stuck, I think, in focusing on our now, if we're wise enough not to dwell in the past, and, although I really believed that when the boys were little was the best it was ever going to be, I am pleased to report that this, being the parent of young adults, is even more fun. Nothing prepared me for how much I was going to enjoy their going to college, looking at colleges, thinking about colleges, researching, sharing information with others, and then choosing and finally, going. Now, I've been so lucky and my two that have already headed off have gone to the most wonderful schools in the most wonderful towns. I fell in love with The Oldest's chosen college town, Wilmington, North Carolina the first time we drove in, and with his school, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the moment I walked onto the gorgeous seven hundred plus acre campus. I loved every visit, exploring the surrounding beaches and the beautiful downtown on the sloping banks of the Cape Fear River, just before it flows into the Atlantic, a city of water features, a deep-water port, distinctly southern, historic, old and gracious.
This morning, The Oldest woke up for the last time as a resident of Wilmington. The truck is rented and mostly packed with five and a half years of accumulated possessions and a few new items he inherited when his roommate moved out first and left them. I honestly never thought this would happen. It is such a great town, I really thought he'd find a way to stay there, and, at first, he did. I'm proud of him, though. He set a timetable. He said when he graduated last May that he'd give the entrepreneurial opportunity with which he was presented until the end of the year and that if they weren't able to be paying him acceptably and regularly by the end of the year, that was it. I figured, like other entrepreneurs I've known (been married to) that it was a soft deadline that might extend, stretch, spread into just one more month and then another, and then another, but I was wrong.
He's sad about the move, made most especially poignant by the loss of his dear friend and former house mate, Sean, but he's coming back to Atlanta, at least for now, and he'll be living with an old friend (really old, like, since first grade) in a large apartment in a house directly across the street from our little apartment. He's been sending out resumes and going to interviews since early January and I have no doubt he'll find something soon. He's also sent off for graduate school information, certain that he needs an MBA to augment his Communications Studies and English/Writing degrees. He informed me on the phone Monday that he's sent off for information from the University of Georgia and Georgia State University as well as (drum roll, please) Loyola New Orleans, Tulane and the University of New Orleans. Now, this son has never even been to NOLA, where his younger brother has been living since August of 2004, and there's no way in the world we could ever afford to send him to graduate school at Tulane (not even the professional MBA program), but as sad as I am about the notion of no longer having a son who lives in that beautiful coastal North Carolina city, the idea of having them both in New Orleans is just too cool to bear. He's open to anything and is eyeing possibilities in Charlotte and Miami too, both places where he'll have friends from college.
My work here is nearly done, with just one more to launch, and I'm excited about what lies ahead for me, perhaps a chance to put first some of the things I put behind being a wife and a mother. I've been deeply sad and very contemplative these last weeks. There are certain aspects of Sean's death I've had a hard time grasping. I want to thank my readers (and Monica's readers) for the amazing support you've shown me. Your wise words and kind sentiments were a great comfort, as was watching that amazing celebration of life, Mardi Gras, from afar, courtesy of my dear friends and fellow bloggers reporting from New Orleans (Adrastos' Carnival Wrap Up has, at the bottom of the post, past all the great pics, links to a handful of other bloggers' Mardi Gras posts, together constituting a grand tour, courtesy of New Orleanians).
Sean's sweet soul and his amazingly strong family, perhaps especially his brother, also a UNCW graduate, who has returned to his military duty, remain in my daily prayers. The Oldest told me, about to leave Wilmington with his large group of good friends to attend Sean's funeral, that he was committed to responding to the loss with a determination to live his life in a way that would make Sean proud. I feel like I need to do the same thing, although I'm not sure what that means. I do know that I haven't been living my passions, that I have put duty before art, and delayed those things which my heart desires, and that, even if it takes a million little steps and I never manage to get it done, I must try to change that, starting now.
Paula said in a comment on my previous post: "I can't remember where I heard this, but I was told about a Native American tribe that did not consider a person truly dead until the last person who remembered him was dead." It's a notion that I've thought about before. I once wrote, about another lost friend, "...that, when we go before our time, we leave an empty space where we had been, suspended and maintained by our connections with people and places, like we were still there." Love transmits. It sustains our place. It's in our best interest to create as much of it as we possibly can. I promise to try.
Peace, out, y'all.
No comments:
Post a Comment