By Barbara Solomon Josselsohn
The Beginning
It’s an ache that started a few years ago when your son left for college, and you realized that time was passing too, too fast. Your next child was approaching the very same milestone, and you decided you would no longer just sit back and watch. “Okay, that’s it!” you shouted to the universe. “I let David go, but I’m keeping Rachel! Do you hear me? I‘m keeping Rachel!“
Okay, you didn’t really mean it. You knew Rachel should grow up, as should her younger sister, Alyssa. But you were upset, because after years of long, luscious child-filled days, you saw that life was changing. Because even when you complained or felt harried or unappreciated, you never stopped loving being the mom of three young kids. You loved the chill of late fall, when you’d send them out to school in the mornings and welcome them back home in the afternoons. You loved when winter approached and the streetlights came on as early as 4:30, and all three would be bathed and in pajamas before dinner. You loved the first warmish afternoons of spring, when you’d stay with them at the park until dusk, then stop at the pizza shop for a quick, late dinner. You loved the searing days of July, when you’d go to the town pool in the mornings and doze at home in the afternoons, sheltered from the heavy, humid air outdoors.
But life had a way of speeding up amid the flurry of school lunches and permission slips, Little League games and school concerts, and suddenly you found that before you even got used to one new thing, you were hurtling toward the next. And now it’s the evening after Rachel’s high school graduation, and soon she’ll be off, just like her brother. That‘s how it goes.
So you tell yourself that as of today, as of this moment, things will be different. David may have whizzed out the door, but you’re not going to let that happen again. You have two months before Rachel leaves for college, and you’re going to make the most of them. You will slow the clock, stretch out the minutes, immerse yourself completely in Rachel and this, her last summer before college. You will fill up on Rachel this summer, and not let college or time or the universe steal even one drop. You will figure out a way to own this summer, and then when Alyssa graduates, you will do it again.
It will be the long summer of Rachel. So that come the end of August, you’ll be ready to let her go.
You wonder what the universe has to say about that.
The Boyfriend
And so the summer starts, and you put all thoughts of Rachel’s impending departure out of your mind. You think about things to do together—trips to the beach, the movies, Broadway shows, lunches at your favorite spots.
You look at your calendar, start to play around with times you can spare from work. Weeks when Alyssa will be away at camp. Weekends when your husband and son are busy.
But you forgot to factor in one thing: Rachel’s boyfriend.
You don’t know when Rachel became old enough for a boyfriend. You don’t know how he became the center in her life. Sure, she’s always had plenty of friends. Weekends during high school were filled with parties and school events. But plans to hang out with her girlfriends tended to be casual, last-minute arrangements, easy to shift around if you were available to take her shopping for new spring clothes or out for lunch. There always used to be time for you.
But today when you open her door and say you’ve booked an outing to Mohonk Mountain House for facials and lunch on what you thought would be an otherwise lazy summer day, she looks up from her Facebook screen and studies you like a complicated math problem.
“When would we go?”
“Saturday morning. We leave at 9:30.”
She nods thoughtfully. “When will we be back?”
“I don’t know. We can stay as late as we want. Why?”
She bites her lip, trying to be diplomatic. Dressed in her gray college sweatpants and stretchy white tank top, with her hair piled up in a messy brown bun, she looks way too young to play the role of adult. “It’s just that Jason and I were thinking about going out to dinner…”
And then a week later you tell her you’ve finished an assignment you thought would take the whole afternoon, so you’re ready to head to the city to snap up some half-price tickets to a matinee.
She nods tentatively. “I have a lot to do. Can we make it next week?”
“What do you have to do?” you ask.
“Well, I wanted to finish choosing my classes this afternoon because Jason’s coming over tonight.”
You love Jason. Really, he’s the sweetest boy in the world. You know about the jerks out there and you’re so glad she’s picked someone wonderful for her first boyfriend. He comes over when she wants him to, stays away when she asks him to without getting defensive, he’s polite to you and your husband, what more could you ask?
You could ask for the little girl who only had time for you, the girl who was always thrilled and grateful when you asked if she’d like to see a movie or go for ice cream. You could ask for the little girl who would jump up from her dollhouse or turn away from her dress-up box, her Cinderella crown still on her head, to say, “You’re the best!”
You could ask for that little girl.
But you won’t find her. She’s gone.
So you won’t groan and you won’t fight, but you’ll learn to consult her about her dates with Jason before you make any more plans.
And you’ll appreciate the time you have together all the more.
Shopping
By mid-July the circulars show up, fast and furious—in the mail, online, tucked into the Sunday paper—so you can no longer deny that it’s time to take Rachel dorm shopping. Lots of girls opt to do this with friends, so you count yourself lucky that she agrees to include you at all.
You arrive one sunny August morning at Bed Bath and Beyond, Rachel dressed for maximum efficiency in gym shorts and sneakers, her hair pulled back in a no-frills ponytail.
It’s difficult for you to drag yourself from the car. You know that before the day is through, your trunk will be piled high with bedding and bath towels, desk accessories and storage caddies, and there will be no denying that she’s going.
Rachel’s eyes light up at the colorful array of dorm-room accessories inside the store entrance. It’s not that she’s spoiled or greedy or selfish, she’s just excited to be outfitting her new home. She wants the cushy upholstered armchair, or how about the comfy two-person love seat? “Rachel, it’s just a small dorm room,” you say. But she isn’t listening. She’s examining ottomans and multi-tiered shelving.
So you pull her over to the escalator and explain you’d like to start with basics like bedding, to which she shrugs and nods agreeably. “Charlie got a hot pink comforter,” she tells you. “Maybe I’ll get pink too, so our beds will coordinate.”
Charlie is Charlotte, her prospective roommate, whom she met at an admitted-students event last spring. They decided right away to live together, but lately you’ve been thinking it’s not a great match. Charlie says she wants their room to be a hub for friends, while Rachel tends to prefer privacy. Charlie likes to stay up late while Rachel loves a good night’s sleep. You wonder if Rachel chose this roommate too quickly, and you worry about the other decisions she’ll jump into feet first. You need another year to show her how the world works. But you don’t have another year. You barely have a month.
And that’s when you realize that she’ll have to take her lumps, make her own mistakes and learn from the consequences. You can’t stop her from getting hurt, from being disappointed, from misjudging people or situations and occasionally having to go back to square one. You can’t possibly prepare her for everything that could go wrong—and even if you could, she wouldn’t believe you. After all, when you’re on the brink of college, life is a magic carpet ride.
And there’s no room for you to ride along.
The Final Week
Her boxes are lined up against the wall in the living room. The printer sits unopened on the table. The bedding and towels have been washed, folded and packed into a vinyl storage bag. The pink fabric ottoman is close by, next to the poster frame filled with photos from high school.
There’s no escaping it anymore. She is leaving.
Her days and evenings are filled with excited goodbyes, as she meets her girlfriends for lunch or frozen yogurt. There are finals calls from Nana and Grandma, from aunts and uncles, and emails from neighbors and former teachers.
You can stand the boxes, you can tolerate the calls. But it’s her room that gets you. Just walking in at night to give her a goodnight kiss is painful. You can’t help but see the blue fabric bulletin board where she tacked the ticket stubs to her first concert, the wand she bought at Harry Potter World, her full set of Rick Riordan novels on the bookshelf, the bracelet her best friend brought her back from Israel, which she keeps on a pedestal on her night table.
And you start to see that all these years when you thought she was yours, she was actually becoming her own.
And the realization is so in your face, you almost wish that moving day was here already. Because you don’t know how many more times you can walk into this room without completely falling apart.
Last night at home. Goodnight, sweetie. Sleep tight.
Goodnight, Mommy. I love you.
The Last Goodbye
And then she’s gone.
You arrive on campus bright and early. You wave at the cheery upperclassmen in brightlycolored T-shirts who stand on a ledge holding a banner that reads “Welcome!” You follow the directions of other joyful upperclassmen who show you where to stop, where to unload, where to park. You haul suitcases and boxes up stuffy stairwells on that sweltering late August morning. You hang up clothes in an impossibly small closet and layer a puffy comforter and fluffy pillows on a thin, institutional mattress.
You walk back out to the quad to hear the college president speak.
And then you say goodbye.
You hug her and she hugs you, and you tell her you love her, you tell her to take good care of herself, you tell her she can call at any hour of the day if she has a problem, you tell her all the things you are supposed to tell her. And then you let her go.
“Goodbye, Mommy,” she says, which makes you feel you will fall to your knees, right there on the quad. But you don’t crumble. Instead, you watch as she makes her way back to her dorm, where meetings and get-acquainted parties beckon. You watch her grow tiny and then disappear.
And because you’re not the type to cry in public, you press back the tears as you realize that you’re not just saying goodbye to Rachel on this hot summer morning. You’re saying goodbye to all your children. You’ve been saying goodbye for a long time.
You’ve been saying goodbye all along to stick horses and tiny race cars and princess tiaras, to trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving, to first-day-of-school outfits and trips to Staples for pencils and glue sticks. You’ve been saying goodbye to big, crazy birthday parties and sleepovers in the basement, to trips to the zoo or water park, to long evenings waiting for the snow to fall and glorious mornings when school has been cancelled. You’ve saying goodbye to snowman building in the backyard, to peeling off wet clothes in the mudroom and warming up with hot chocolate in the kitchen. You’ve been saying goodbye to evenings with everyone home.
It was supposed to be the long summer of Rachel. But now you realize that like everything in life, it went by in a flash. You didn’t slow it down at all. Of course, you’re still a family. But everything is different now. Two are out. The third one will soon go, too.
You walk back to the parking lot, noticing that all the parents look a little smaller, deflated somehow. Your walk is slower; your breathing heavier; the world is a little less bright. You’ve launched Rachel—your middle child, your oldest daughter—into the world, and now it’s hers to do with what she will. And your one consolation is that you know you’ve done your best. She’s amazing. The world is lucky to have her.
Author’s Note: It’s been almost two years since that not-so-long summer, and Rachel is now a rising college junior. David graduated from college in May, and Alyssa will be a high-school senior this fall. As for me, I’ve learned that attempting to hold back time doesn’t work. So with my wonderful husband at my side, I look forward to the adventures our kids embrace next.
Barbara Solomon Josselsohn is a writer whose work has appeared in range of publications including Consumers Digest, American Baby, Parents Magazine, The New York Times and Westchester Magazine. Her first novel, The Last Dreamer (Lake Union Publishing, 2015), is due out this fall. Visit her at www.BarbaraSolomonJosselsohn.com.
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