Have you noticed that your children leave you at every age and stage? When they stop nursing. When they can crawl into the next room while you are folding laundry. That first bright, merciful day of Kindergarten. The night they’d rather read Harry Potter by themselves than have you read it out loud because they can read it faster. When they hit the age where they can make thier own toast and eat breakfast on their own. …. I thought the leaving thing only knocked the wind out of you when reached the infamous “empty nest” stage. But really, it happens all along the way. I didn’t realize there would be so many passages that leave you breathless, trying to mourn and celebrate in one burning moment.
…….
Leaving Souren has been a little bit like a death. I hate to be so melodramatic, given that there are so many things going on in the world that are ever-so-much harder and more devastating. Leaving your semi-adopted teenager in the States in order to go gallivanting around Europe with your two adorable blood children and a handsome husband—this barely makes a mark on the ‘hardships’ meter. Still, it’s hard, to take a child into your heart and then to say goodbye.
I know, of course, that there is the telephone and internet, and even old fashioned snail mail. But if you’ve ever known, or met, or even grazed shoulders with a teenage boy, you should realize that communication is not, generally speaking, their strong suite.
I knew, when we left, that most communication with Souren would be over. And I’m trying to not put my happiness under his text messaging thumbs. You simply cannot let a teenager take the wheel of your happiness. That’s even more daft than letting them drive your car on prom night.
But at night, when those nasty little buggers come to get me, I am mournful, and I re-think the wisdom of being so nonchalant about grafting a child who is not my own, so firmly onto my family tree. In those dark moments, I write maudlin poetry on the pages of my notebook. (The emotions of my days and nights are so different, sometimes I am left wondering, which is more me?) Though the pain in these overwrought words are real, I have to ask myself, would I hesitate to love this way again…to love this way still? When we are paying attention to the true and the questions, these are the things that come up. These are the ponderings that make up the reality of whom we are and who we are to be. So of course, the answer must always be, ‘amen.’
——
loss is a wolf at the throat,
there, at the front of the neck
where all you cannot swallow
lies exposed and unprotected
the ache and the tear of it,
the way you bleed unchecked
this is what it is
to take another’s child,
graft him deep into your veins.
i cannot recommend it,
this unchecked rushing of the blood
when the graft does not take,
when the bloodline is severed.
even birthing blood ceases with the hours,
after the placenta tears.
but what of that wound
of which nature has no counterpart?
does this blood then run without clot,
without ebbing,
leaving in its wake
more than the womb as hollow?
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