Apart

Yesterday I glimpsed a moment from my future.  

My daughter and her team had just lost the semi-final game of their softball tournament, and before we started out for the one-hour drive home, she and I stopped for a cold drink. I had to smile as her 5-foot-1-inch frame disappeared through the doors of the convenience store, sweaty and covered with dirt from a stolen base.

While I waited for her I killed time reading texts, checking voicemail, previewing the weather, cleaning out my bag.  Still no Sam. I watched as three people exited, feeling disappointment each time I didn’t see her. I was anxious to get on the road. And then it hit me.

My daughter and I are on the cusp of something completely foreign to us and to what we know as a family. 

For just shy of eighteen years, any separation we’ve experienced has not been for more than a couple of days. And when we are apart, she is a stone’s throw away. Any long distance trips we have made by car or plane have been together, and now more so in this moment that any other, I was grateful for never having to learn to deal with true separation.

But the reality of the future came crashing in on me as I pictured where we might be in just a few months, post graduation. Perched upright now in the driver’s seat, eyes peeled on the front door, I played a game with myself.  I pretended I hadn’t seen her for weeks. I imagined a variety of scenarios that could likely happen in the next chapter of our lives.  Most painful, I envisioned she was returning for a visit from college or coming home from boot camp, and I was waiting for her to walk through those doors to come home to me.  The idea of either scenario thrilled me as I simultaneously broke into a cold sweat.

The thought that someday this was what the future held for me, for us, took my breath away. It’s inevitability causes my heart to ache with its bitter-sweetness. The sweet being her future, wide open and loaded with possibilities.  Knowing who she is and what she’s capable of feeds my prediction that good things are about to happen for her. But the bitter is knowing that our time together, as we know it as mother and child, is almost at its end.

When I saw her finally come through those glass doors with her drink, I felt it. I practiced feeling what I will feel to see her after an absence for the rest of my life once she leaves me. When her need for me in my current role comes to its natural end and becomes something else. I practiced seeing her as if she were returning to me, and in this fantasy I conjured, the mere sight of her filled my heart to the bursting point with such intense love and lightness.

I wonder how I will not come apart when we’re apart?  Apart. What an ugly word.

But I didn’t want to dwell on that thought, so I chastised myself with a swift reminder that I gave birth to her to give her life, a future. I raised her to go out into the world, to be happy and successful.  Or at least I hope I have.

And the inevitable hasn’t happened yet. I have time to enjoy her almost constant company a little longer. She probably doesn’t think so, but I still have so many things to teach her.

I have months with her until she leaves me, or doesn’t after all. The date of our separation will be determined when her plans are set. And when it’s needed, I’ll help her cope with the goodbyes.

I know about goodbyes.  Sixteen years ago this very week, my husband and I packed up our belongings and daughter for a new start, the second time I left home for new adventures.  And my entire family and I now experience being truly apart. Twenty-three hundred miles across the country may as well be twenty-three million.  It’s meant learning to stay connected despite distance and appreciating every precious moment we do have together.

My daughter’s day to pack may be sooner than I’d like to acknowledge. But with a little luck and a lot of love, we’ll never feel apart, but “a part” of each others lives. Always.