The long, liquid light of the June solstice illuminates the
bittersweet season of the closing days of mothering two daughters, in an intact
home, where I tuck them in each night, and coax them into the day each darkened
morning.
Bitter, and sweet. This week, I noticed a title on the
bookmobile shelf—Parenting Your Emerging
Adult—and plucked it down, adding it to my stack of entertaining and
enlightening loan materials. It is dense, and daunting, and clearly can’t begin
to address the welter of feelings and challenges that fill my heart.
The day before, I had stated my two intentions for this
last, languid summer to my emerging adult child: I want to get you ready in
every way we can for the adventure ahead, half a continent away. And, I want us
both to conduct ourselves in such a way that when the summer is over, we aren’t
both filled with relief at parting, and with regret for the summer we didn’t
have.
All along, I have tried hard, almost every day, to parent
with intention, to make meaning in the spaces between the unending chores of
parenting, homekeeping, partnering my spouse. I’ve tried to have conversations
with my girls that held real content, communicated deep values and ideas, and
in recent years, that communicate more of my real, non-mother individual self,
as best as I can recall her, to my children than I feel I gleaned from my own
mother.
It has been exhausting and exhilarating work. I hear many
parents looking forward to the lightening of the load, the easing of the endless
round of family-tending, but the long light of this June makes me yearn to
travel back to a solstice 19 years ago, a long evening spent poolside in the
tropical heat of St. Maarten, where we waited for it all to begin.
June 20, 2014
Mary for The Poplar Grove Muse
Beautiful, Mary!
ReplyDeleteThe summer will pass too quickly for Kate and you.
Anne E.
Mary, this was so powerful. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI miss writing with you all, particularly on the solstices!
ReplyDelete