Exactly. I love to have my son visit us, but it's only for special occasions now. And I miss him when he's gone. I suppose it's one more problem with being such a mobile community. Families used to all live in the same town (or the one over the hill) and could visit frequently. Bet they enjoyed it AND it drove them batty at times too!
I SO much wish it were still the case that families still lived in the same town. It seems good to me for a child to go away and experience life on his own, but then he could come BACK. It also seems likely that if a child goes to school in .....say, Michigan, especially since it's a school with lots of kids from Michigan, that it's likely that he'll fall in love with a Michigan girl, and end up settling in Michigan.....very far away.
I feel this too. I love the thickness of having them near, hearing them talk about stuff, sharing in it, even if only passively as they talk to each other. And yeah, as it thins out, it seems... really thin. It makes me want to spend more time with other kids, just to keep the kid-ness in my life.
I really really like your description of life with children as "thickness" because that's SO it. One of my sweetie's cousins just got married and had her first child and is now pregnant with her second child, and she said they planned on continuing to have children until their house felt "full" which it didn't yet. Mine is just so darned empty....
And as they grow older still, we also miss those times that are forever gone except in memory, all the stuff of their childhood and growing up. It has its compensations, though, being one's own woman again; and the readjustment is as gradual as the one that went the other way.
At first, Spouse and I were the mobile ones, moving to a place which has suited us well ever since but is far from where we used to live, where all our children then lived too. But I remembered how Fate took my brother and me far away from where our mother lived, and though we went home for visits when we could, it wasn't the same - and I realised there's no sense being somewhere just to be near your kids, because they may not stay near you. As it's turned out, several of them have moved from there since. Some are permanently overseas.
All I can say, is thank God for email and facebook!
I have no problem with the "being my own woman" and actually have lots and lots of things to do, and very much look forward to being able to do other things that I can't do having kids in the house (like going on long trips with my sweetie), and I've had quite the independent life from them for years now, but still..... We're never going to be that family again--all living in the same house, in each other's space and lives.....
And today, the first day of a new semester, so many of my creative writing students (16 & 17 year olds, mostly), were saying that they can't wait to get out of Kansas....ie, away from their parents, who'll miss them terribly....
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At first, Spouse and I were the mobile ones, moving to a place which has suited us well ever since but is far from where we used to live, where all our children then lived too. But I remembered how Fate took my brother and me far away from where our mother lived, and though we went home for visits when we could, it wasn't the same - and I realised there's no sense being somewhere just to be near your kids, because they may not stay near you. As it's turned out, several of them have moved from there since. Some are permanently overseas.
All I can say, is thank God for email and facebook!
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