From a Facebook post Dec 30, 2023
We dropped off Cole. He's off to New Zealand for a year. His playlist in the car on the way included Landslide and I cried. The line to security was long for Hayden, so we didn't wait. Walking out, I cried, but I didn't weep. This time.
.
I cry a lot of tears these days and then wipe them and talk normal. I don't hide them; they're not depression tears. I mean, sometimes they are, when it gets the better of me, but not usually. The kids hug me tight and smile and allow me this. They know, because I tell them, how hard this is, but they don't make fun. Usually. We have good kids. Really good kids.
We dropped off Cole. He's off to New Zealand for a year. His playlist in the car on the way included Landslide and I cried. The line to security was long for Hayden, so we didn't wait. Walking out, I cried, but I didn't weep. This time.
.
I cry a lot of tears these days and then wipe them and talk normal. I don't hide them; they're not depression tears. I mean, sometimes they are, when it gets the better of me, but not usually. The kids hug me tight and smile and allow me this. They know, because I tell them, how hard this is, but they don't make fun. Usually. We have good kids. Really good kids.
I told someone today that I did New Zealand, too, and I'm jealous and excited for him. But this is the heartbreak of instilling the love of adventure and world travel in these kids of ours. I did it to my mom. I can't really tell them not to and I wouldn't. They were some of my best experiences. But only some. And then there are the ones since all those youthful adventures. Those trips formed me, formed us. But when I look back at how many chapters there have been since then that have included these 4 (+3) humans right here. Wow. I can't count the blessings that I believe are from God. And I'm so thankful.
But this. This move into empty nest time? It's actually really excruciating. I can't explain the heavy hearted physical pain. I know it's grief and grief let's you know you loved hard and good, if not perfectly. We just lived. And it's been a really glorious, sometimes mundane, living with these people God loaned to me. He's given us a really cool life together.
I know it's not over and we still have a lot of living to do together, but not in the same way. Happily for us, it includes these little moon beams here. (see what I did there?) And I can't believe how cool it is to have them here in the world with us.
Facebook is lame and I spend too much time on it. But the beauty of it is that I get to see all your names come past my eyeballs and I can count the added blessings we've had in all these chapters - all you lovely friends.
When we got home, a friend of Aidan had posted this after a wedding they were at with lots of old friends:
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." He told me it's Kerouac.
Thanks for indulging me on stupid Facebook. I really wrote this for me, but thanks for being a friend. Here's to lots more crazy ventures.
When we got home, a friend of Aidan had posted this after a wedding they were at with lots of old friends:
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." He told me it's Kerouac.
Thanks for indulging me on stupid Facebook. I really wrote this for me, but thanks for being a friend. Here's to lots more crazy ventures.
We got a puppy.