Leaving, and being left

This afternoon, our friends Meghan and Donna left Seattle for their new lives in Chicago. Meghan will be starting graduate work at the Art Institute of Chicago while her partner Donna will probably fall into some wonderful, glamorous job without trying. Seriously, Donna is one of those terribly lucky people who is in the right place at the right time and has the talent to knock your socks off. She knows several languages and has several degrees, and she's in her 20s. We have a picture of her graduating; wifey and I call her our daughter, and we always say she makes us so proud. Donna will eventually get her Ph.D. and settle into some austere academic career while Meghan writes a novel that will make us fall on our knees, shouting how we aren't worthy. You heard it here first.

Meghan was one of my wife's students when she taught high school in eastern Washington for a few years. By the time we moved out to Seattle, Meghan had already come to Seattle for the University of Washington, where she met Donna. We've gotten the chance to watch Meghan and Donna grow into a couple and observed as Meghan's writing prowess intensified. We'd traded books and CDs and joined them for dinner in Seattle's arty and queer section of town. Broadway and Capitol Hill may be getting seedy, but, despite the slummy streets and closed businesses, they have Thai food to cry over.

And so, our friends are departing for the east, back to where I grew up, believe it or not. I'm sure we'll see them, and I'm positive they'll come back to see us (Thai food in Chicago is one degree above radioactive waste). But still, they leave us for a future that we can't see or be directly a part of, and somehow I feel unsettled...maybe selfish. I want my friends close. I miss my friend Cori as she and her boyfriend travel through Canada. I haven't heard from her in days. I hope she's okay.

Maybe I now get what my mom was feeling when I left home for good. A sense of betrayal and loss, knowing that the child who you have cared for during the good and bad has chosen to chart a future without you. For as much as you drove each other nuts, you had each other. You didn't know how close someone was, how stitched into you someone is until they go off on their own. Sure, phone calls and e-mails let you know how someone is doing, but it's the proximity. It's the notion that you could be there if things go wrong. Being out there...across the country, it's all a mystery what's going on, making you wonder in the dead of night if you gave them all the right lessons, if they are safe.

And as for the kids, they don't look back. Achieving escape velocity is all that matters. It’s a big, wild world for them to tame. You miss your family, but you think about yourself, your life. It bugs you when your folks call, when your mom misses you. You wish she wouldn't hang on to you, even over the phone. You're an adult now, even though she never understands that. You'll always be her little kid, and she'll want to look over you, keep you safe. Kids grow up and move on...and that little bundle of life you've observed, cried with, laughed with and more is now gone. It's a pretty big hole that remains, and you don't know how big it is until you get older, until family begins to grow old and die...until your friends depart for other points on the map.

Meghan and Donna have left us, the older in age us, the quasi-parents...we are become separated as the artsy kids head away from a decaying metropolis rotting in bad roads, pricey coffee and a populace who weren’t sitting in the right chair when the high-tech musical chairs had its tunes kicked off the table by the fat kids wearing Big Oil and Defense Contractor t-shirts. My wife's uncle Jim died a couple days ago at age 63, a long life for the males in her family, or so I'm told. The lack of his gravity at family events, including the wonderful Thanksgivings hosted at his house, will be noticed. Little by little, those bonds slip away and we are a bit more adrift. The stalwart notions that held us and gave us bearing are no more. We now seek our own direction on a path we've heard little about. As the older generations die, we advance, becoming the elder statesmen, the storytellers, the comforters, the lesson-teachers with each passing day. And we hope to hell and pray to God we learned our lessons well. We have a new generation before us, and being an adult starts to take on a concrete weight on our shoulders.

French Word of the Day

idee force (ee day fors): a powerful idea