Dear All,
September is a time of new beginnings; the start of school, the Jewish New Year and
the onset of fall with the shift to cooler weather and changing colors.
I am about to take my youngest (of four) to college and thus, enter the empty nest club.
For those of you who have launched a child or been launched yourself, this is for you.
An ode to a special, precarious, long awaited but never ready for it moment of life.
Enjoy this poem, entitled:
EVIDENCE OF HER
The pan she uses to make her signature dish of eggs over easy on toast with avocado is left, as it always is, in the sink.
The egg-crusted spatula nestled beside it.
Evidence of her need to be nourished.
The signature Converse sneakers, black high tops with white soles and less than stark white laces, are left, as they always are, under the coffee table near her beloved spot on the couch.
Evidence of her need to be comforted.
The car keys on the black counter top in the airy kitchen, left where they always are.
Evidence of her need to venture out.
What will I do without the evidence; scant though it might be, of what she needs; what she fears; what she dreams when she lets herself.
She will be alone but of course she won’t.
Her inner world, mostly a mystery even when she is here, will be farther out of reach;
The everydayness;
The complaints;
The eye rolls;
The occasional sideways hugs;
The evidence
less visible
less palpable
less of a shriek of the torment of teenage wonder
Harder for me to hear,
Perhaps easier for her to hear, away from me.
She will build new ways, construct herself newly, a mix of terror and acceptance.
She will uncover her own evidence of who she is in a new space;
A small physical space
but a huge open space of possibility and opportunity
where new ideas, beliefs and ways of being will find their way
into a new routine.
Perhaps her sneakers will still be thrown under her bed and that image will offer her a
moment’s comfort at the end of her day; so that she will know that she is always close
to home.