booandbunny

There are a few days in your life when you wake up and can’t deny a certain fact.

Today my life will change forever.

The day you graduate high school there is that sudden finality. An era of life has ended and you’re expected to be a bit more grown up now.

The day you graduate college and you look across that sea of hopeful job hunters and realize they’re no longer your comrades. They are your competition.

The day you don that dress and step onto that white runner and see his glimmering eyes at the end of the aisle.

The day … this day … when your last one takes his first solo trip away from the nest and you realize that nest building, nest tending, nesting is what you do. And you say a prayer that bus doesn’t leave school without him because he can’t read yet and he’s only 5 and he gets confused even when the people he trusts ask him too many questions … what would he do if the principal were trying to help him and he forgot all the right answers?

Fluffy feathers fall across the yard as he heads toward the bus. You know the kind. The flitty little down that you don’t understand the first time you see a real nest. The kind that warms the eggs and cushions the chicks and covers there bodies once they’ve dried off after hatching. The kind they shed when they don’t need it anymore.

And my eyes move from Kindergarten across Second Grade to that face that’s lost all traces of the baby I once held and holds hints of the man I’ll know someday. As the most independent of my three bold souls he has never outwardly expressed his need for me as much as the others, but after many years we are finally coming to an understanding: He might not need a kiss goodbye or goodnight, but I do. Thank God I work to gather those each day because when he really needs me he doesn’t hesitate to reach out. I wonder if he isn’t a bit anxious about today, about new classmates. Second Grade … let the cruelty of childhood ratchet itself up another notch.

A blue feather sails down from somewhere, the long kind that a jay might lose in a snit over territory. No permanent harm to the bird, just a temporary sting. It’s the kind of sting you remember for a very long time.

I turn back to the nest and see a dance. It is the movement, the music, the energy that is my not-so-little girl. It seems like just yesterday these back-to-school tears I shed were for her first day of Kindergarten. I went into the house clinging to the hands of my little boys and I cuddled them on the sofa, trying not to cry. Now she moves through my days in ways that make me realize how short the time is until she embarks on her journey to womanhood. Third Grade … boys are more interesting, clothes more intriguing, dancing more curvy.

An immature bald eagle comes to mind. She’s always loved bald eagles and, since she was very young, has called those yet to grow into the characteristic white plumage “teenagers.” While I’m thankful we’re still a way off from that, one might argue 9-12 is a more difficult time than 15-18.

Yes, there are days when you wake up and you can’t deny a certain fact.

Today my life will change forever.

And perhaps losing that big contract couldn’t have come at a better time because I’m not where I thought I would be on this day. Hell, I have even applied for a fulltime gig, an interesting sounding job with a great starting salary, but now that I think about it I just don’t have it in me.

If you had told me seven years ago when I left that newsroom for the last time that I would never want to work like that again I would have cawed and said something about missing the rush … the satisfaction of doing something I’m really good at.

If you had told me four years ago that one day I would be standing here, the last of them off to Kindergarten with more excitement in his eyes than fear, I would have cooed and whispered something like, shhhh … they’re all asleep.

IF anyone, anywhere in all the articles I’ve ever read had told me that trying to make the leap from the nest back into the world I once knew was going to be such an utterly offensive thought I certainly wouldn’t have believed them. I have been at home since 1999. I have been fortunate enough to keep my hands on the keyboard since 2000. I didn’t just walk away from my career. But the idea of going fulltime now … Now when he’s got so much new to express … Now when he’s got that tendency to internalize … Now when she’s surrounded by cliques at their genesis … Now it makes my stomach turn.

Putting them in aftercare … putting them in camp next summer … putting Captain Kindergarten in daycare because school is only half a day … it would undo everything we’ve worked for these past seven years. And the moment I realized this was the moment I really realized it’s been sEvEN YEARS!

When you’re standing in the middle of potty training and finger foods and people too small to reason with, you spend the day chasing them, teaching them what is safe and maybe what is right. And you spend the day chasing your tail and hoping you don’t bite down on it too hard should you catch it. Every day is a marathon and, when you fall through that tape at the end you realize you have the same to-do list for tomorrow that you had for today.

And you spin and you spin and you line the nest and you fluff the nest and you lay eggs and they hatch and you gather the worms and you fluff the nest and you weather the storms and you keep cool in the heat and you fluff and you gather and one day you turn around and they are all standing there … right there at the edge and they’re shouting: "You always say No! Please let us try!"

And you wake up and you can’t deny a certain fact.

Today your life will change forever.

“Go ahead, babies. Fly.”

And they do.

// posted by HoBess @ 8/23/2006 12:57:00 AM