Time...there's not enough...it moves so quickly...it's a funny thing. How many times have I said "it seems like yesterday" when at the same time it seems like an eternity. How many times do I think about how fast time has gone, and how little of it may be left, leaving me not holding precious the one certain thing..this very moment. Klondike is 8. I can't stand to even say it. Hard for me to put it in writing. People say "oh, he's an old guy" yet, we just rescued each other a moment ago. He needing me, and I so profoundly needing him. There was no doubt. It was as if I conjured him, and he was perfect. Dad is 83. I hate to put that in writing, although 83 doesn't seem or sound so "old" to me. It seems a solid age. Easy for me to say. He calls for dinner, Captain Bill's or maybe Mythos Greek, and I do put on the brakes of my frittering and fretting and to do lists and wonder how many times will we have the opportunity to share a meal together? It is a finite number. They are all finite. Say yes, say yes, say yes. Joseph is 15 (I just wrote 13 first by mistake). His shoulders are broadening, his waist and hips are straight as an arrow. His legs are long and heavy laden with strands of adolescent muscle, soon to be man muscle. As I walked on the beach tonight with Joseph I was distracted by the middle aged, pudgy, scantily clad couple standing together, embracing in the surf, bathed in the magnificent pink orange of today's sunset and holding hands as they headed back towards the shore. I was surely longing for a hand to hold of my own, wondering if there will ever be one and what it must feel like to have a kind of solid love, grown up, captivating love. Meanwhile, Joseph was surely distracted by a longing for his future, his freedom, and the ability to set forth on his life, fueled by beautiful, unbridled enthusiasm and desire. Running, doing handstands, headstands, writing S.O.S. with a stick in the sand, as if to say "life, come and get me!" I am so glad he's feeling ready, and alive, and excited, with a belief that he has endless opportunity. This is the point, yes? Get them ready to fly. Love them to the point that they believe they can launch. Julia is 18. I actually have no difficulty understanding that this is the number of years my oldest child has been alive. Yes, I remember the glider rocker and the revelry of nursing and cooing and talking that we had the luxury of indulging in for so many hours together. In some ways our conversations seem only slightly different now. The gist is the same: how much we love each other, respect each other, know that our lives our intertwined even mysteriously into our future together. That is why I struggle as the sun sets today with her current object of desire, the new boyfriend. Just for today, the day I have invested in both emotionally and financially, the day that I looked forward to being a rare gem of celebration with only me and my children, he is right here in the middle of. A know it all young man who's busy overcompensating for the fact that he knows (as every suitor of my spectacular daughter must surely know), he is not worthy of this rare beauty! It is only a matter of time I tell you that she will realize that you too, you new boyfriend, are only a step in the ladder of this girl finding more of her true self. She does not need you. And you, Mr. Not-So-Hot manners, better get ready lest you take an excruciating fall. OK, OK, this is of course the ramblings of the biased, love-blinded mother. She leaves for Italy in 3 months. Time. She is ready to launch. She is ready for her own countries. I can see us, all three, standing on the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The place where Joseph exclaimed as a very young boy, "it's the ocean!" It is time stretching ahead. My two beauties are envisioning possibility. The world is enormous and they want to know more. I believe they have the confidence they need, the moral compass that they must have, to seek their heart's desires.
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