Standing in the Gap

Everyone keeps asking me how I am doing lately.  What they want to know is how I am feeling about Sam, my oldest child, leaving for college this week.  Thanks for asking, but I'm finding it hard to talk about.  Not because I might burst into tears at any moment, but because I feel all sorts of things all at once and I can't quite explain it.  I feel like a washing machine when it goes from sensing the load, to agitating, to rinsing, to spinning, and then slowly, slowly stops-it's job well done.  In reflecting on the last 19 years with this child, I realize that's what I've done for him.  I've taken the beautiful mess of a boy I created at birth, gotten him soiled, sorted him out, roughed him up, wiped him clean, rinsed him off, and am now sending him out into the world all shiny and sweet smelling again.  It was a dirty job and someone had to do it.  I'm lucky it was me.

So, I'm feeling all the feels.  I'm tired and wrung out and at the same time excited and proud.  I am mostly grateful and so blessed to have been able to be there-really be there- with and for him his whole life till now.  Maya Angelou wrote in her book Mom & Me & Mom:

 "My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more important, ...she was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother... I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.  My mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why, people sensed that I had value.”

And now I'm standing in the gap.  The known is all around him- familiar, comfortable, safe.  The unknown lies ahead next week, next year- strange, different, unnerving.  He teeters on the edge of his future and I stand firm on the solid ground of his past.  I hold his history, his growth, his childhood in my hands.  He takes his strengths, his will, his promise and jumps forward.  I stay behind and watch a young man I know better than anyone else does and sometimes don't even recognize at all.  He goes on confidently, boldly, with only an occasional look over his shoulder for comfort and reassurance.  That reassurance is as much for me as for him I am certain.  That is the gift he leaves behind.  The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment we both have as he walks away.  So how do I feel?  How am I doing?  

I feel good until I get sad.  I am excited until I get anxious.  I feel happy until I am scared.  I am proud until I am uncertain.  I am strong until I am exhausted.  I am ready until I am not.  So, I'm doing everything.  I'm nagging and encouraging, helping and holding, getting in the way and making things easier.  I'm praying and wondering and hoping and dreaming. I'm standing in the gap.  I'm waiting for him to cross over and bridge that known and unknown.  I'm holding space for him as he goes forward into his future. I'm shedding my love so that he carries it with him and knows for certain how much I value and honor him.  

To Samuel- I promise to always stand in the gap for you.  Always.  Thanks for giving me the chance and for making me feel important.  With love, Momma.