It’s been a week since I left my first born off at the corner of Washington Square Park, steps away from her new home away from home.
People ask what it’s like. “A missing limb,” I tell them. Ghosts of every age and every stage around hallway corners, sitting at the table in the kitchen, brushing their teeth at midnight. The impulse to knock on her door and offload a shirt I think she might like. Then remembering, and deciding maybe I’ll keep the shirt and see.
But loneliness isn’t the only feeling. The space she’s left behind is heavy. But not all of it. Honestly, mothering is working overtime forever and being on call at any hour no matter what other plans you had. But when their own life outside you begins to fill in for some, maybe even most of these shifts, there’s an openness suddenly. And filling it is curious work.
I ask myself, what WILL I do with this space?
The answer, for now, is more writing. Not the kind for clients. Not the kind that pays and gets me traction in my career. A different kind of writing. About mothers and daughters. About what it means to change the past. About how we build healthy adult relationships with our children when we’ve never had one to model it after. A series of letters perhaps. To my daughters, and to my mother and grandmothers. Mostly to myself.
So I invite you to come along and see what letting go looks like.
… And what takes its place.
