Parenting, Part I

         I jumped back in to work and life with both feet once the sabbatical ended, which means finding time to actually write has been difficult.  I need to make it a priority, just as I have made gardening a priority.  Writing is therapeutic for me and hopefully helpful for those who read what I write as well.  While my list of things I've wanted to write about is extensive, today I feel it necessary to write about parenting.  And specifically the focus will be on my son.

     Jonah flew back to Alaska yesterday for his fourth year in college (notice, I didn't say his "senior" year... the program he is in is a five year program and he wants to do a couple minors as well, so probably more like a six year program for him).  As I sat in church preparing for the service, someone asked me if it was going to be hard now that Jonah had left.  My first reaction was, "I will miss him greatly, but at the same time, I'm ready for life to return to normal."  I felt his leaving marked the end of an extraordinary summer that encompassed my sabbatical, as well as time with Aislynn and then time with Jonah before they both went back to school.  I love my son so very deeply, but he and I have always been a bit like oil and water.  Now that he is an adult, we do better, mostly.  But it takes a great deal of energy for us to navigate how to talk to and interact with one another well.  It takes work, on both our parts, to be careful about how we say things and to ask for clarity when we need help understanding the other point of view.  During the couple weeks he was home, we were not without conflict and it was deeply painful conflict at that.  Even the middle of the night before he left at 4am Sunday morning for the airport, we found ourselves in an argument.  When each of us gets stressed, we have been in the habit of "poking the bear" and we relate to one another as that bear.  The stress then of his leaving sent us into a last round of arguments.  It's exhausting, for both of us.  And at times it is very hurtful, no doubt for both of us as well.  As a result, I thought I was looking forward to at least having things be not quite so exhausting once he was gone.  

    But I've found myself wondering if part of the reason we fight so much and so deeply isn't the level of love we have for one another.  Jonah is my only son.  I didn't know what it could be to raise a son for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am one of two girls in my family of origin.  But the bond I have with him runs so incredibly deep that sometimes I feel I may be too enmeshed with him.  I mean several things by that.  First, it has been a challenge for me to let him go and choose to do things that I believe to be dangerous or other than what I think is best for him.  He's a 21-year-old young adult, but it's been difficult for me to accept that. So when he decided he wanted to go ski-packing in the arctic circle in the middle of winter, I was concerned, upset and and I tried to talk him out of it.  But he survived it fine and seems to have had a wonderful experience.  Now he wants to rent a dry cabin in Fairbanks to live in next semester.  Again, not what I would want for him: a dry cabin is exactly what it sounds like it would be: a place without running water and many are also without electricity.  We have the conversations: "How, then, will you keep yourself warm during the month or so that it's -40 degrees?"  "How will you even START a fire at that temperature?  Or sleep through it without freezing off parts of your face?"  "Where will you bathe?"  "How will you pay for the car that you will need to get to and from school?"  "Where will you plug in the car in those temperatures when you don't have electricity?"  "What if the generator goes?  Then what will you do?"  And the questions go on.  It is hard for me to let him be the adult he is trying to be, but I'm working on it. 

    Secondly, his opinions that differ from my own can be hard for me to take.  I'm working on that as well.  He has his own worldview and ideas, and sometimes they upset me, especially when I can't understand how he sees the world the way he does. Still, I believe I've done more growing through my relationship with my son than I could have expected.  He challenges me to be better, to be open to seeing the world differently and to accepting the differences between us more fully.  He challenges me to let him be the adult he is, and by extension to let others be who they fully are.

    Perhaps because of all of this, though, I was looking forward to a short break from the intensity that is our relationship.  But, no surprise, now that he is gone, I just find myself heartbroken all over again.  We raise our kids to leave us.  And I keep expecting that each time they go it will be easier, but it isn't.  I look for him when I look out my office window, hoping he will show up for lunch or to go for a walk.  I listen for him at home, wondering what he will say about what I just heard or saw.  I am trying to let him have a little space to start his classes (which began today) and to settle into his new room at school.  But he is on my mind and in my heart to the point where little else can hold my attention today.

    What is this strange part of life in which we are part of creating beings who break our hearts constantly but also fill us with so much love it defines who we are and who we want to be?  What is this strange activity called parenting that takes over our beings and makes us see more clearly our own flaws and shortcomings while calling us constantly to do better and be better for those who are moving on anyway?  Why were we created to love with such ferocity those who will return that love not to us but to their own offspring?  

    For me, it connects me to God as parent.  And I find myself wondering if God also loves us with an intensity that is so beyond what we can imagine that we can only return the very smallest measure of that love to God.  And I wonder, because for me faith has never been "heaven insurance" but has always been about relationships, if God also feels that same loss and pain when any of God's children choose other than relationship with God.  Maybe.  We don't know.  

    For today, my thoughts are with my son.  I am so proud of the young man he has become.  And I am so grateful that we stay connected, even across the miles.