10 AWP Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 July 12–18, 2019
This Summer, end of an era
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The Summer of 2019…
what will we think when
we look back upon this
time?
With the power of hindsight,
we will see the bigger
picture. Details will fade except
those that writers write
about, painters paint about, or
singers sing about.
We will talk about it in
broad strokes. “We were this
then…” people will say, filling
the “this” in with whatever
broad sweeping generalization
seems to fit, even though details
could prove otherwise;
even though no period is ever
one thing. We feel things personally
as we feel them, and
that real feeling often differs
greatly from how we might
have thought we’d feel, if we’d
ever tried to imagine.
My son graduated high
school recently, something
I never really imagined, not
specifically. I knew it would
come one day, and that day
drew nearer and nearer as he
graduated elementary school
and then middle school; as he
entered high school and completed
the first, then the second,
then the third year. We
looked at colleges and he applied
for some; he even went so
far as to choose one, so there
was no denying the reality of
the impending end, the end of
high school for him. For me,
it marked the end of his living
with me as a child.
I saw other people go
through it, heard about their
children’s graduations, and
watched as their children went
off to college. Still, though, the
idea was a foreign one. My
older son was safely ensconced
in his room, surrounded by
laundry and gum wrappers
and empty cans and bottles
of various beverages.
He still is, for the summer,
ensconced in that room. And
yet with his recent appearance
in a cap and gown — smiling
beneath that mortar board
with the tassle hanging just
beyond his long eyelashes —
something in me stirred and
shifted.
He is not mine to boss
around anymore. His decisions
will be completely his,
and I might never even hear of
them, might never be aware.
Even if he chooses to share
them, or I become aware because
they are obvious — he
wants to live somewhere, or
he chooses to marry someone
— I am extraneous.
I do so loathe to be extraneous.
I’ve realized that about
myself recently, how much I
desire to feel part of the lives
of people that I care about, especially
those I carried in my
womb and birthed from my
body. And that may indeed be
why I feel so alien right now,
like an exorcism has been performed
and I am somehow not
my whole self. A part of me
has been severed.
“This isn’t about you…”
someone said to me with a
sneer when I acknowledged
I’ve been kind of a b---- to my
son — my 18-year-old high
school graduate — lately.
I don’t know why, but being
afraid I’m losing someone
and feeling out of control
about it makes me mean
sometimes.
I felt sheepish at her admonishment,
selfish. Right, I said.
It’s about him.
Later, as I was driving, I
shook my head. Bulls---, I
thought. This is absolutely
about me. Of course, his graduating
is a big thing for him. But
it is ridiculous to imagine that it
doesn’t affect me. And I have to
deal with that reality, that shift
and change. It is a serious transition
to send a child you have
born and raised and lived with
under the same roof for all but
a few weeks of camp every year
away to live by themselves.
And I shouldn’t be made to
feel guilty for thinking about
how it affects me, about how
it makes me feel.
I shouldn’t be a b----,
though. And I did apologize.
I realized that loving someone
so fiercely and desperately
makes me feel vulnerable and
deathly afraid. Sending someone
into the oft-brutal world to
fend for themselves is f------
scary, and so I feel scared. And
when I feel scared I feel out of
control. And when I feel out
of control… I sometimes act
badly. I lash out.
Instead of stopping to say,
“I love you so much!” I might
say, “how come you’re such a
disgusting slob?” I realized,
though, that I’d much rather
say I love you.
The Summer of 2019, for
me, will be The Summer
Before My Son Left for College,
The Summer I Contemplated
the Loss of Everyday
Motherhood (even though my
younger son is still around for
the next two years), The Summer
I Felt Something Shift in
My Home.
Transitions are hard. We
feel them on a personal level
when they affect us. What we
know can only come from what
we really know and feel in our
gut, when the things that we
might have known was coming
and heard about actually
comes to absolute undeniable
fruition, and we are forced to
feel what we feel.
Fearless
Living
By Stephanie Thompson
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