Ahh, my happy places…
Under a star strewn sky.
On a boat on the water.
Beaches, definitely beaches.
Near my son.
Empty nesting. That first Lifetime Achievement Milestone that tilts heavily, maybe predominantly to bittersweet. An eighteen year love project. Self-sufficient! “Go, fly!”
You adapt to the distancing. You find good worthy uses for your newfound time. You fill that heart-shaped hole. You’re okay, you’re even happy.
Your life is full.
But it’s hard to dodge that nagging feeling: nothing in your life will ever mean so much.
Your life is full. But when he comes home your heart is full. His room – door shut but occupied again – is your new happy place. Your heart is full.
Some of my first memories are the beach. Warm waves jostling… Sand castles (can’t go home without leaving a monument). Throughout my life, many happy places, but the beach always tops.
Beach with the kid: some of my happiest of happy places. A peak memory: frisbee, football and bumping a volleyball all in the first 45 minutes. Then a leisurely (but massive) castle.
The beach is different now, me being old and all. No more running all over for a football. Little frisbee or volleyball. Some occasional body surfing. A rare sand castle and moat.
But it’s still the beach. The sand. The long blue to the horizon. The welcome relentless psyche-burrowing sound of the surf.
That’s still there. It will always be there.
It will always be the beach.
Our visits now may just be sitting in the sand, quietly… But he’s near. I'm home. And my heart is, again, full.
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My earliest memories are of my single dad and me.
His friends "Uncle" LZ and "Aunt" Joy.
My nanny, "Aunt" Alice.
But mostly him.
He was always super excited to see me when he got home from work. Maybe overly excited (I only understood why thirty-five years later).
His huge role shifted a bit when he remarried, and then it got really HUGE the first time she hit me. I was five.
Through all the disconnected vignettes of my life he was the common anchoring thread.
He was my protector and my rock. My example.
I always feared his absence, his loss.
At six, in a cloudy sky, I saw a wisp that looked like a '52'. There could only be one meaning for this: "Dad will die when he's 52." I was always conscious of how much I needed him.
When I moved to San Diego, I made sure to fly home three or four times a year, to see family, friends, Florida. But mainly to see my dad.
I never doubted Dad's intense love for me, but he was neither emotionally articulate nor demonstrative.
For many years, leaving town, I was always conscious that it may be the last time I saw him. He was always a little uncomfortable with the "purposefulness" of my goodbyes to him.
The last time I said goodbye to him was after a wonderful visit, the first one with Leigh. We celebrated our upcoming wedding, and we got to hear Dad accept our invitation for him to be our Best Man. Because of the emotional quality of the weekend and in deference to his deference, I was casual about the goodbye at the airport. His health was continuing to deteriorate, I knew it could the last. But I was cool as I stood on the dropoff sidewalk as he walked around the back of the van to drive away.
It was the last time. His smoking-clogged arteries won the race to drop him - fast and hard in front of my sister six weeks later.
I don't regret the casual final goodbye. He never, ever had reason to doubt that I loved him so deeply.
But I'm thinking of that moment a lot now as I cling to my interactions with my son. I'm loitering in the passes in the hallway, the "clean up your food bowls". Sharing my excitement for his future, but trying not to overdo it. Trying to estimate and honor the cringe limit.
Knowing that The Final Do You Need Lunch doesn't have to be epic, and that the Final Goodbye At College Dropoff isn't the final goodbye.
I hope that we have a good Dropoff Visit, to sustain us through the first long separation, but it's not critical. He knows he's loved, and we know we'll get through it.
We've all had many, too many, Final Goodbyes. This isn't one of them.
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The heart is faster than the brain, the red ticker often shocks the grey matter.
When you get a Surprise Ugly Cry, your brain better figure out what Urgent Memo it missed.
The first Surprise Ugly Cry I remember was right after watching Parenthood in the theater with my girlfriend almost 35 years ago. I had just graduated, got a job. Everything was looking up, and I had less stress than I had in years. Why the breakdown? My dad was struggling. As had happened before, the economy was crashing and he was overleveraged in construction projects. He was losing everything again. My brain needed a wake up call.
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