Autumn changes
Yesterday, I woke up with that feeling I used to get in the fall. I knew somehow that things were about to change, but wasn’t quite sure how. The air was crisp and cool, as if summer had died of a sudden heart attack, and the sky was smeared grey from the impending hurricane, or tropical depression, or whatever the meteorologists will ultimately decide it is. It was not unlike a late August day back in 1992, when my parents loaded up the station wagon and drove me to the University of Maryland to start college. Less than a year later, I was driving the family car between home and school, and cancer killed my father.
Today is Tina’s first day at home with the girls — daycare is done, and we walked out of the center last night with a twinge of sadness. The girls spent much of their first year of life in that building, with the teachers and other kids. Now they will likely never return. Although it’s exciting that they’re staying home, it’s hard not to mourn the relationships they’re leaving behind. I will miss the sense of community I shared with the other parents, and watching the girls interact with their peers.
That’s one change, and it’s a big one. But there are others to come this fall — parenthood isn’t a constant state so much as a surfboard riding huge waves of growth and development. Every day, watching the girls leap forward, I am more keenly aware of the shortness of life, the importance of each tiny moment. In as much time as I’ve been living outside my mother’s home, my girls will grow old enough to drive a car. It seems like just a few years ago that I went off to school, but in reality it’s been a large number of years. So short, so long.
Being a parent makes me think of mortality a lot. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it’s my own mortality that obsesses me.
Another big change - this morning my friends Michael and Edie at long last adopted a child. It would be wrong of me to divluge the details of their lives to some 3,000 monthly unique visitors, but I will say that there are no two people on planet earth who deserve to be parents more than them.
Okay, back to more productive activities.
