Leaving Home

This was written after I got home from the bus station on the date listed below. For a parent the moment of departure from a child is often stamped indelibly in the memory. It may be one of the most bittersweet moments of a child’s life. I realize that by this time he was not a child, but a “child” in the sense of son or daughter, which never changes.

12/29/77

Our firstborn left today.

So short the time has been, and so much we wanted to do. Not the first to leave, he of the late-blooming variety, but maybe the tender one anyway, the one that it would be easy for the world to bruise.

Excited? Who knows, but he probably is. He doesn’t show it, except maybe to make an extra comment now and again.

And what do you say in the last five minutes before the bus leaves? I love you? If he doesn’t know that by now, it’s of no use to say it. Be good? The Navy will tell him what to do, rules that have little to do with what I could tell him. Write? He will.

So we sat, and talked about the bus being late and how he will get to the hotel, and I notice the mixture of excitement and apprehension in his eyes. Of all those moments that stick in a mother’s mind, this may be equal to any.

Birds and children fly away, and he is gone.