transition, revisited
I just dropped my eldest at kindergarten and he went in without looking back or hugging me goodbye.
He was amping himself up to go by himself to go find Charlie. I'm proud of him and feeling really tender. The slow, long separation, all the ways he needs me less and less. What the fuck seriously with this. Give me a sacred calling to be the safe harbor of nurture and love and then pull out the roots of our bond by the hair one at a time towards independence over the rest of our lives? What an unbelievable process it is.
It's chilly this morning. Sweater chilly. The tomatoes are still trying to ripen and this slow descent of the tilt of the earth, this fading of summer heat, this drifting towards the darkness and retreat of the year. This is my teacher. It isn't permanent. It isn't linear. It's a cycle. My eldest and I can reconnect, him and me, on the other side of this particular pulling apart of bond. We can reconnect from a place of greater intention, less instinct, greater agency, less automatic. More, a tiny inch at a time, over a lifetime, of us choosing to love each other. Less bare need.
What a completely unrelenting lifelong crucible are relationships. A few weeks ago I was on a women's circle call, and used the word relationship, and my youngest asked me in the midst, ‘what are relationships?’ Where to even begin?
Are relationships not the playground where we practice everything we are learning and reaching for? Every single one. How do I show up to my partner, to the neighbor, to the frenemy at drop-off? It feels like a tall order to enter into everything with intention. And it is. And the autopilot of how we show up, those deeply ingrained habits, must certainly work well enough until they don't. until they change. Until, for one person to walk their path toward growth, toward the open door of invitation, they show up differently to the relationship. It's a little pin prick of pain. Or it's a blow that triggers pain from a lifetime ago. But it demands of us to consider (or we could autopilot) how we adapt to the change. My eldest needed something different today. I feel pain, sadness, grief, for a season of my life slipping away. One that made me a mother. One that caused its own path and triggers. But that clarified this purpose in me to love with my whole being, this little one I made.
And, of course, I should/can/must/deserve to feel this grief. And then, I want to return open-hearted to receive my little relationship partner in a new way that works for both of us as we are today. A constant cycle. Death and renewal. I can live with that.
