Lost

From the moment a mother finds out she will have a baby a story unfolds. The story of that child's life from the moment of their birth, through early childhood, the first day of school, the high school graduation, college, marriage, children etc...We always know that it will one day be time to say goodbye. Our child will leave us just as we left our parents. We know this and still when the time comes it is a mix of joy and utter sadness. How did we get here so fast? Wasn't I just changing your diaper? We know we will not stop them or even tell them that we want them to stay. We will do what our parents(hopefully) did and simply support them in whatever decision they make. Even though we want to tell them, wait, are you sure, are you really, really sure? We can’t do that and we know this is the moment we saw so clearly when they were just the teeny tiniest little seed inside of us. We knew this day would come and so we smile, we hold back tears, we tell them we are proud of them. Even when we see them struggling to decide what to do, we do not pick up the pieces for them and tell them what the right thing to do is. The time for that has passed. It flew by just like all the other precious(and not so precious)moments of their childhood.

I remember leaving my mother when I was nineteen. I was very attached, very dependent on her while at the same time so angry and unforgiving about the past. Even so, leaving home was beyond difficult. I drove 10 hours away with my then boyfriend(now husband) and when we arrived I remember feeling utterly lost. It had just dawned on me how far away I was from my mother and I thought there was absolutely no way I could do it. I wanted to turn the car around and drive back those ten hours straight into my mothers arms...but I didn’t. As I sit here now in the position that my mother was in so many years ago when my sister left, and then a few years later when I left I can put myself in my mothers shoes. It must have been so hard to let us go, to not say a word to discourage us, to smile and act like she was ok. She had done the same thing when she was a young woman. She had left her mother in Colombia and moved to the United States. This is one of those times(and there are many) when I wish I could talk to my mother and ask her how she felt, how she could bear to let me go.

I have four children. Max, Luna, Diego and Leila. My two oldest(Max and Luna)are here with me as is my youngest who is still in middle school. My third child, Diego, who just turned nineteen, is in England and it feels so far away. My mind tells me this was always going to happen but my heart breaks for him to be so far from me. It is as if a piece of me is missing. I want to fill up that space with busy-ness. I want to plug up that hole that has been left. I want to run away from it. Outrun the uncomfortable feelings of sadness, loss, disorientation. I am resisting that urge and sitting in the middle of it. It’s uncomfortable but also something valuable for me to move into, swim through, kick, paddle, float in the uneasiness of change. All of it. There have been some tears and then some more tears. There are days when I think I am just fine, I am adjusting and then there are days where it’s just hard.

I think as a mother it might be easier when our children show us they don’t need us, don’t want us and can’t wait to get away from us(those teenage years.) It can make the time that they leave so much easier. We may even have moments that we look forward to their departure. When my older daughter was in high school we often did not get along. I sometimes wondered what she would say to her friends about her mean mom. I wasn't the most patient or understanding mother. I had my opinions and my daughter disagreed with all of them. Then she moved just six blocks down the street to the dorms of UC Berkeley. Within a few months our relationship changed drastically. It was no longer mother vs. daughter but simply mother & daughter. It was as if we could finally see each other clearly. The fog had been lifted. My relationship to my mother was more similar to my relationship with my daughter.

My oldest two pushed back hard against me just as I pushed back hard against my mom. My son Diego never pushed me away. He never blamed me, or rebelled against me. When Covid shut everything down my son Diego went from being a very busy junior in high school to being home A LOT. He was often my couch buddy during those early days of Covid before they had even started some form of virtual schooling. He played Scrabble with me(no one likes to play word games with me.) We both started to learn the ukulele although he moved onto the guitar quickly. I got very used to having him home and the moments when I thought about where he would go to college and likely leave home were quickly pushed away. Diego had a very hard time deciding where to go to school. He went back and forth between going away and staying close to home. He very nearly decided to stay home and go to the local community college and then in mid June he made his final decision. Go to school in England. My heart sank but I did not say a word. I only asked what had been the deciding factor. He got a little flustered and told me this, ‘It would have been so much easier if you had just told me what to do!’ If he only knew how hard it was for me to simply ask questions and remain neutral. Just as my mother could not tell me, and her mother could not tell her, I could not, would not tell him. He is that teeny, tiny seed that has grown into a young man. A young man that must begin to make his own decisions.

When he was born I was a typical young mom, totally overwhelmed, totally exhausted, cranky much of the time, trying to do too much and convinced I wasn’t doing enough. My two oldest kept me on my toes, then Diego was born. He rarely cried, when he did cry, it was half hearted and he would often sleep in his car seat. I had never experienced having a child sleep in the actual car seat or sit happily in a stroller. My first two were often screaming when in the car seat and the stroller was something I usually ended up pushing while I carried a squirmy child in my arms. You’ve seen these moms, we’ve all seen these moms. I was one of them. Whenever I see them at the grocery store, library, restaurant I want to tell them this will all go by so fast. Enjoy the pandemonium! Anyway I could go on and on about motherhood, the joys, the sorrows but I’ll stop now and say this: Diego was the grounding force I needed in my life at just the time I needed it. From the time he was born I felt that he had this confidence that was unshakeable. An internal compass that has always been there. It is not anything I felt as a child, teenager or young mom. He is the first to go far away. Of course it was bound to happen, just a matter of time.

I am here feeling a little lost but know I will find my footing. A little wobbly. Even though our instinct is to try to be still as a statue we need the wobbles, the falls, bending and swaying with the seasons. All of this to remember how bendable we actually are. I am still me whether all four of my children are with me or each eventually finds their own way. I was me when I was young and living at home. I was me when I moved out on my own. I was me when I got married, graduated from college, started a family, opened a yoga studio, moved back to California. My story continues to unfold and expand. There is no real end to this story, it is a beginning, with an end, that goes right back to the beginning and so on. This is the journey. Keep on wading, floating, kicking until you reach the other side and then turn around and come back. The story that unfolded before me with each of my pregnancies was always only a story. Each of my children is choosing a very different path from mine and from each other. I am amazed by each of them and how their own stories are continuing to unfold before my eyes. I may not be ready for the changes and I may feel lost at times but that is simply the beginning of the next chapter, a blank page which can feel a little scary and overwhelming and is also so full of possibilities.

Being lost is not the terrifying feeling it was when I was a child and could not find my mother at the grocery store, crying in the aisle until she found me. It is not the terrifying feeling that I had when I left my mother all those years ago. I am lost in a different way, a way that feels more calm, inquisitive. I am floating in the middle of this feeling with no sense of urgency to find a way out. I think I may just float here for a while.