Before you go #2...on stardust and geometry

Dear Sam,

Before you go, you should know how much your family adores you.  As I type this, I am sitting on a couch overlooking the lake. Your two younger sisters are learning a new dance for TikTok.  Your dad and brother are on their way back out here, having spent the morning learning how to hunt with your uncle.  Your big sister is at college, of course, at a volleyball tournament (of course) and in an hour I’ll log back onto the livestream to watch her play.  You are at home.  You are probably alone in the basement, watching movies or football, texting or snap chatting your friends, napping.  I miss you.  I always miss you on these weekends.

Our rule is that you need to check in every four hours and leave your location turned on in your phone so I can see where you are.  You typically make the rounds between our house, your closest friend’s houses (most often the one with the pool), and various fast food restaurants.  You usually forget to check in very often.  You join us at the lake even less frequently. 

I know if you were here you would be bored and missing your buddies.  You would likely be making a brief visit, before driving back home to spend the evening with your friends.  This is my second go around with a high school senior, and I’m four kids into parenting middle and high schoolers.  I get it, now, how completely you all start to pull away.  What begins with those first, daunting steps staggering into my waiting arms, becomes the steps into the first day of kindergarten, when we both feel our separation so viscerally and painfully, and ends with the first steps into college is punctuated in the middle with endless and longer separations.  It is like two points that start off touching, at first literally sharing one body, later nearly physically inseparable, but eventually beginning an inexorable trajectory separated by just a single degree or two.  After 18 years, this geometry has left us quite far apart indeed. 

Before you go, I want you to know that my heart longs for your presence every day.  I once read that mothers carry cells of their children’s bodies inside of them for their entire lives.  You are never gone from me, not completely.  I also read that we carry remnants of the stars in the cells of our body.  There is some kind of truth of motherhood in those two facts.  You are inside of me for always, we both carry stardust inside of us. You are inside of me, you might drift as far away as the stars.  You will leave me soon, but you have been leaving me, incrementally, for almost two decades.

But I think (at least I pray) that you can sense the deep mother-love that is your birthright.  I think you know how completely you are my heart.  I remember thinking once when you were miserable in middle school and profoundly embarrassed any time I showed up for anything (as my friend at work put it, “It is so embarrassing that I have a mom and that she LOVES me!”) that the most loving thing I could do was walk away.  So I did, often and well.  I’m a busy woman after all, and I always had a pile of kids and a demanding job to attend to.

What I want to make sure you realize, however, is that this whole family loves you.  I know that our rhythms are different than yours—we are, collectively, louder and more active than you.  You like naps and long afternoons in front of the TV.  You enjoy sarcastic, philosophical conversations that meander.  We rarely sit still for that, we like to run around and excessively do. We are also a fiercely competitive crowd. I wish I could make the pace of our family become slower and kinder so you felt more welcome.  But I can’t, and you have framed yourself in the role of the outsider for a long time.  But we are always better when you are with us.  You bring so much color and richness to our family tapestry and you belong with us and to us.  We want you around—we all do.

Before you go, know that we love you.  We ALL love you.  Your younger siblings admire you and come alive when you pay attention to them.  Your older sister enjoys your company and very quietly keeps an eye on your heart and your wellbeing through your texts and phone calls.  

I’m leaving you with this photo from a recent lake weekend without you.  I deliberately photographed the girls videotaping your youngest brother to illustrate for you the love and admiration you could have if you joined us more often.  We are all cheering you on and loving you dearly.

You are our Sammy, you belong to us, and before you go, know that you are so very, very loved.