Deep feelings when kids leave for college
My granddaughter, Julia, just left for college, once again simultaneously rekindling feelings of emptiness and gratitude. I know, because Julia’s father is Don, my son who, with my daughter, Kati, left Barb and me with an empty house when they left for college. Here’s the column I wrote back then.
August 25, 1992
Chicago Sun-Times
“Departing Children Leave Quiet House”
By Dennis Byrne
The kids are gone now.
Packed off the youngest of my two children to college last week.
With Kati and, now, Don both away, Barb and I are alone. Guess this
is what they call a passage. Or another test.
Friends tell us that this will be a great year. After two
decades of kid raising, we'll have our lives back. We'll do what we
want, go where we want, when we want.
But I dunno. I think I'm happy. I think I'm not.
I'm glad to get my house back. But my home feels so empty.
The first thing we noticed when we got back from taking Don to
school was no phone ringing. It's so peaceful; it's too quiet.
I can set the car radio back on my favorite stations. I haven't
yet; rock music assaulting me when I start the car makes me feel Kati
and Don's presence.
No shoes, sports equipment and other stuff to trip over anymore.
But that means there are no kids around anymore to leave things to
trip over.
Won't have to pound on bedroom doors anymore to make sure the
kid's up in time for school. Can't pound on his door anymore, so all
we can do is lie there sleepless, wondering if the kid's up.
For a week before he left, we nagged: Hurry up and pack, Don.
Get focused, you haven't much time left. Suddenly he's packing; this
time tomorrow, he'll be gone. It's too soon.
One minute Don and I are joshing at dinner. The next I'm out in
the garage watching the rain, so no one can see me cry.
I can't believe how fast two childhoods sped by, and how long it
took. It seems like just yesterday I was carrying them on my
shoulders. It seems so long ago that they were small enough to be
picked up and hugged.
In the backyard after Don has left, I sit alone and listen to
the neighborhood kids. "Watch me, watch me!" "I get the window seat."
From next door, I hear 5-year-old Dustin call to his dad.
I struggle to remember what it was like - the sights, the sounds
and the other sensory gifts and demands that parents regularly
receive from their kids. The feel of a small hand in mine. The
pervasive smell of the diaper pail. It's all beginning to slide away.
Thankfully, almost knowingly, Dustin wanders over at just the right
moment to ask when Don and Kati will be back, to inquire after the
cat, to ask all those other questions that I've forgotten that kids
ask.
How thankful we are that our children are fortunate enough to
get to attend college, to pick careers of their choice. How we worry
about how they'll handle the trials ahead.
The irony is that if we had not put so much into making sure the
kids would be ready to leave, then maybe we wouldn't have grown so
close, and their leaving now wouldn't hurt so much.
Actually, children haven't left; friends have left. Children you
love, automatically, without qualification. Friends you like.
Friendships are made, friends give and take. Friends you miss because
they are who they are.
Maybe someday I'll figure out this parent stuff. Why, after all
these years, when they're hundreds of miles away, children are still
sources of such joy, and pain.
Barb and I, as we did for about half our lives before Kati and
Don arrived, now will have to look within ourselves. What will we
find there? Who will we find there?
It's scary. But we'll have this to build on: There's no better
way for two people to come to know each other than to have children
together, to share the ecstasy and demands of creating and nurturing
a life.
And there'll be this: With only two people left in the house,
it'll be a lot easier to nail whoever took the last cookie.
Dennis Byrne is a member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial
board.
Ya know it’s really good writing if neither the pain or the pleasure abate after 25 years. Really good stuff Dennis. Many thanks for saying what I’m thinking.