What the hell. You might be right, you might be wrong. But just don’t avoid.
—Katharine Hepburn
I have been absent from these pages as I have been dancing, but not as you might imagine. Twirling around like Stevie Nicks or attempting to get uptown funky like Bruno Mars, I do love to dance. Yet, since August 19th, I have been doing the “a void” dance.
My son moved back to his eagerly awaited life as a college student which had been paused since March 2020 due to Covid. He was more than ready to leave his bedroom with 6th grade wallpaper, weatherworn stuffed animals, and his mom asking him “How did class go?” when he would descend from his online pre-med classes. I was heartily aware this pause in the construction of his adult life would come to an end. And when it did, August 19th to be exact, it was perfectly right for him and achingly strange for me.
Only when I took some time off from my listening post as psychotherapist during these past few days, did it hit me as to why I was working like a fast food grill chef, flipping hour after hour of clients, busying myself with laborious emailing clean up, hitting the pillow achy and exhausted. I have been avoiding what this interrupted, secondary “good-bye” really means.
As a college freshman in September 2018, I was as ready as any empty nester mother hen could be…in fact, I had been in training since tearfully bidding him “See you in 4 hours!” on his entry to kindergarten. Yet, the abrupt shelter and lockdown of March 2020 to the August 2021 “restart” was never in the parenting “How to Let Go” handbook.
He was age 20 in March 2020, and he is now halfway into his 21st year and taller, gained a girlfriend, broadened his shoulders, improved his curveball and filled his cup with determination to pour into his life.
I have been keeping myself extremely, and perhaps a bit martyr like, occupied in an attempt to avoid this truth: whether I am ready or not, my baby should not, nor will, be living like a child any longer. His needs are not for me to make pancakes and monitor his homework. The shift from “parent to child” to “adult child to aging parent” has taken place. So now what? What new dance steps do I need to acquire?
What about you? Have you been doing the “a void dance” as well? It’s time to heed Ms. Hepburn’s words, don’t worry about whether taking up pickle ball is “right” or learning to speak French is “wrong”—go for it, do it even if you are not sure of the outcome. Being in the “void” creates isolation, fatigue and emotional paralysis. As our young adult children are eager to sculpt their lives, we still have more time at the potter’s wheel to do the same. Start spinning, leaping and keep dancing!