The world is round and the place which may seem like the end
may also be the beginning. - Ivy Baker Priest
In My Daughter's Eyes (Martina McBride)
"In my daugther's eyes I can see the future
A reflection of who I am and what will be.
I know she'll grow and someday leave,
Maybe raise a family.
When I'm gone I hope you'll see
how happy she made me,
For I'll be there
In my daughter's eyes."
This is a very bittersweet time in my life. My youngest daughter just graduated from high school and plans to attend college this Fall in a town 2000 miles away from me - and home. I'm not sure I'm ready to go through all of this again. I have been through it two previous times with my two older children leaving home and going off to college. They have since married and are living in places that are far away from home. Somehow though, this one feels different. I'm not sure if it is because she is "my baby" or if it is because she is last child living at home. We have have spent a lot of time together over the last three years and it has brought us closer. I will miss our times together and sharing similar experiences and opportunities. We have become good friends and I feel like I am losing her to something over which I have no control. But I have been here before....
A good friend introduced me to the above quote by Ivy Baker Priest when my father died in 2005. She gave me an ornament of an angel holding the world in her hands, the quote is engraved on her wing. The minute I read it I knew that it was something that my father would have said to me, had he still been here. This has come back to mind over the past week or so, because to some extent I feel like I am approaching the "end" of my world as I know it. I have been a stay-at-home mother for almost 25 years and suddenly I'm unemployed, laid off from the best job in the world - that I love. My son reminds me that I will always be their mother - which is true - but everything changes when your children leave the safety net of your home. I will no longer be close by to kiss away the tears, bandage the "boo boos" and give a hug and tell them that everything is going to be o.k. (even when I wonder that myself). The choices have larger and more impactful consequences, for better or for worse. I wonder if I have given them a foundation sufficient to get them through the hard times. I worry if they will be able to handle and manage the challenges that life can sometimes throw at them. Have I taught them, either by precept or by example, how to face the challenges and "storms" of life? How will I navigate the empty, quiet house and the longing to have her near?
I wonder if my own mother had the same thoughts when I left home. I remember my father telling me that she had a difficult time with the transition of having me, her youngest daughter, leave the nest for college - and I was only an hour away! Oh, how I wish she was still here so that I could talk to her and find out how she managed to get through this experience and carry on. Yesterday, I was finally sitting down and taking a break after all of the excitement and work of the past week, and a memory of my bedroom in my childhood home came to the forefront. The words to the song "Home" by Michaela Buble' came to mind. I think I was homesick. I wanted to go back home, back to "the innocent age" before all of the changes of life took over my life. I wanted to go "home" and have my mother kiss my tears away, bandage the boo boos and give me a hug and tell me that everything is going to be o.k. But there is no "home" to go to there anymore. Ironically, both of my daughters have chosen to attend college in the town in which I attended college, just over an hour from my "home". So, in a way I do get to go "home" when I go to visit them and/or take them to college. In a sense, my world has turned out to be "round" after all, "and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning." Time will tell.
Home - by Michael Buble - for those who are not familiar with it
The Innocent Age (Dan Fogelberg)
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