It’s the little things that I remember and this evening will be one of them. One of those small, subtle shifts that define your life – Sam, for the first time, didn’t go Trick or Treating. The same thing happened with Cal, and then with Meg. Sure they would dress up to go to parties in high school and college, but that is not the same thing. Sam is our last, and we will not go into the dark Halloween night with him anymore. The doors opened by Cal and Meg are being quietly closed. The child part of our lives is fading and the adult child phase is galloping upon us. The burden for the oldest child is to be the first at everything, to open the space of new experience; and the burden of the youngest child is to be the last, closing the doors to small rooms of memory, to be opened but not entered again.
Yet, there are new doors to open and my experience is that those new doors will hold excitement and joy. I have always looked to the new with anticipation and looked forward to change. But for tonight, I will wait by the door for the small ghosts and goblins to appear while wrestling with the memories of my old ghosts and goblins, their etherealness trying to fill the dark evening. And they never will.
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3 comments:
I really enjoy your writing.
(I corrected a typo from the last one. The "this post has been removed by the author" message seems just so SORDID).
Jim--
I find myself compelled to blurt this by the end of nearly every class, but don't because I feel far too silly and like a little child doing so. But to hell with all of that:
You're a good human being.
And my parents tell me that parenting an adult child isn't too too bad. :)
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