move on

go ahead with your own life, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Seven pounds and eleven ounces of holy cow,
Bald for the first year or so,
Blond ringlets the following few

A meteorological worrier those first five years,
keeping a close eye on dew points and scary lightning,
Managing his world by understanding it

The year or two of getting dragged to Saturday morning rec activities
Because its good for you, that's why.

The odds have regularly been stacked against this one.
Well-behaved. Quiet. Slightly introverted.
Single child in single parent household.
One hundred seventy five percent of fed. poverty level.
Occasionally unstable parent. The other one too.

But loved? Oh my. Yes.
Unto embarrassment, probably, but
what is the point of loving if it cannot be demonstrated?

And now.
Now.
He's moving on, as each kid should do.
First apartment.
This is what provides stomach acids their due process:
the eager sense of no more rules,
churning along with a nervous realization of no more rules.
It's part of the Constitution, the Liturgy,
the ecumenical sense of rightness and order.
The child shall leave the home and cleave to something or another,
but neither mom nor dad nor any others of the loudmouth huggers
can adequately fill this next thing, it has to be the uniquely personal real deal.

On my early morning trek to the bathroom
I paused at his bedroom door this morning.
I don't know what I expected to have happen in that emptying room.
Tap dancing frogs in top hats? A banner reading 'You did everything perfectly, Mom'.
Maybe I didn't expect anything;
maybe I'm trying to make connections the same way he used to with hail and tornadoes.

Outside the window, the sky lumbered under weighty rain clouds.
Cry cry cry, sky.
Go ahead. you know you want to.
Here, let me help you get things started.

My responsibility is officially becoming less a responsibility than an equal.
This is not what I expected.
My empty nest will be far from empty, it is true.

Even so,
This quiet dull morning makes me feel, acutely,
the rending of space and time,
a near-miss narrowly avoided accident that doesn't happen at
the intersection of memory lane and futurama boulevard.
How the fuck did that happen? Was I really that unaware?

Please world, I ask only a few things of you.
In return for this child's full entrance into your Big Club
I ask only that you watch over him.
Treat him gently.
Encourage his curiosity. Engage him.
Keep him thinking.

Show him challenges and give him the tools to accomplish them.
Show him bitterness in doses just small enough to taste on the back of his tongue.
Teach him how to earn others' faith and trust. And their respect.
Demonstrate to others how he has earned theirs.
Show him hard times, but no so hard that he can't get back up.
And give him as much love as you can possibly gather up.
I raised him up to this point.
Now he's yours.