Life is a voyage

I feel compelled to write this because you, my darling son and daughter, feel the intensity of your lives and are wondering about having and creating "the right life."

You don't have one life. You have many lives.

You will be a hippie, a conservative, a single person, part of a couple. You will be a student, a worker, a volunteer. You will have a job, be unemployed, start your own business. There will be times when you drink a lot, perhaps, and times when you are against alcohol totally. You will have years when you meditate, eat vegetables and do yoga. Then you will find yourself a rip-roaring steak eater, the more rare the better. You will be a baker, baking your family's daily bread, and then go for years buying your cookies and pies. You will identify yourself as a painter, then stop painting and become a business person or vice versa. You will go through many different styles of life and of clothes. You will be skinny, you will be chubby. You will be happy, you will be depressed. You will have long hair, short, spiky, coloured, permed, curly, straight hair. You will be single, married, divorced, a widower. You might be a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a niece, a nephew, a cousin, a sister, a brother, an in-law, a friend, an enemy, a client, a boss, an employee.

No matter who you are or who you are with, you are always yourself, alone.

Life is an evolution of who you are, of who you become. You are never one thing. Life is a voyage. Flow in each moment, loving each version of yourself, each burning interest of the day. Life is always a quest. Embrace the journey; there is no "arriving." That's what makes life so wonderful. Always something around the bend. Always something to learn, something to strive for.

And if you understand now, that there is always one more person who needs your love and understanding, you will never be lost.

Pablo is going to college!

"When you go to college..." It's a phrase you say to your child all his/her life, staring from the day they are born. It's a cliche, it's a dream, it's far off into some unknown future. You want it for your child, but are thankful the day will never come.

It came. It's now.

My baby boy, my first born, Pablo, IS going to college. Grinnell College. Class of 2012. He's not only leaving home, but he's leaving the country. His presence in my life will never be the same again. When he returns home, it will be as a visitor.

Tears well at odd moments of the day. I know there is nothing more for him, right now, in Yucatan, at our home. He needs to become who he is, away from me, on his own in the world. It is the end of a certain kind of Mothering -- the delight of the day to day intimacy, of my eyes loving my child, of being able to call his name and knowing he will answer.

The only thing that soothes me is knowing how happy he will be. Campus life is wonderful. College is a beautiful bubble: You're on your own and not paying for it. My college years were a treasure of discovery and delights and I know they will be for him as well.

"The empty nest." A cliche and also a real issue to resolve, as all parents do. I am left to contemplate Pablo's empty room and my reinvention as a Mother of an adult "child." It will never be the same again. Something big is over -- for both of us.

I cry in private. To him I show my proud and happy face. I am proud and happy for him. We must let each other go. He will only understand how much it hurts when he lets his own child go. In some distant future.

Right now though, the world is his, and he wants at it.

Godspeed my darling.