In the early morning hours, I said good-bye to my eldest son, Andy, as he left for Ohio where he will be staying for the next couple of months working for his cousin's landscaping business. It is always hard for me to say good-bye to my kiddos. The dual feelings of sadness (for me) and happiness (for them) is sometimes hard for me to reconcile. I know that life is meant to be this way. We raise our children for them to go off into the world to find their own paths, but it is still hard for me, as I suppose it is for almost all mothers.
I know that this time will be especially good for Andy who is having trouble finding his footing on his life's journey. He has been struggling these last few years finding his way forward, and it has caused him some immense anguish, which (in his mind) is only exacerbated by his siblings growing and moving beyond him in certain areas of life. I have often tried to tell him that life is a long-distance race (hopefully) and that it doesn't matter if his timeline looks like others - that we are each meant to have our own unique journeys, but I know that he feels society's pressures of what a successful life is supposed to look like, and it creates an emotional internal turmoil in him that is hard to walk him through.
Going away, being on his own, doing his own thing is a very good thing for him as it allows him the freedom and space to feel like a productive human being. (Which he is.) He is one of the hardest workers I know (and always has been), so I have no doubt that what he accomplishes these next couple (or even few if he stays on longer working for his cousin) will help to fill his emotional bucket - something he sorely needs.
There has been some discussion of him starting a technical school this summer when he gets back from Ohio. He has also applied to a school that will earn him a commercial pilot's license as being a pilot has always been a dream of his. The steps to getting into the school are rigorous, and he will complete the first one on May 15th when he has a 'Class A' FAA medical exam (or something like that). He has had some physical setbacks (two blown lungs to name one) that may prevent him from passing the medical exam which is why I am so happy for him to have the technical school (which we toured a couple of weeks ago together) to fall back on if the piloting school doesn't pan out for him. (I would L-O-V-E to see this opportunity pan out for him though.) I think he has given up on the college degree route which Bobby and I fully support and have been suggesting that he do so for a while now. College just wasn't his jam, but he felt compelled to keep trying to get a square peg in a round hole for reasons both known and unknown to me.
Joshua will be graduating from college next spring and has informed me that he has no intention of staying in North Carolina (which from what he told me has one of the lowest starting teacher salaries in the nation) and will be applying for a job in Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona where there is plenty of sunshine. I know that there is a lot of time for things to change between now and then, but I feel pretty confident that at one point or another he will end up in the Southwest as this is not the first time he has told me of his desire to live in that part of the country.
I try not to dwell too hard on that the fact that my intuition of my children being scattered all over this nation when they reached adulthood was true - because the truth is that I would love for us to all be within comfortable weekly Sunday dinner drives from each other, but that isn't the message we have given them over the years. We have always told them (and shown them with the way we have lived our own lives) to not be afraid to seek out their own happiness wherever that may lead them. (Some of the kids have even talked about moving out of the country which I would fully support as much as it would make my mama heart ache.
The future has yet to determine where Sarah and Elizabeth will end up. I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth followed Sarah wherever Sarah went. They are just so, so close that I do not see them living far apart from one another. Only time will tell.
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