Superposition

Holding on and letting go, at once

Photo by Na Inho on Unsplash

These days, I’m treating my nearly 18-year-old son like a cat in a mood—only looking at him out of the corner of my eye, not coming too close or making too much contact. Still, I study him when he isn’t looking—noting the ancestral layers of his features that shift and morph, one minute his father’s Norwegian jawline and chin cleft, then the dark-eyed, full-lipped stamp of my dad’s Ashkenazi roots. I catch his silhouette as he shambles through rooms, his back as he pops out the door headed for a walk. I linger on the notes pouring forth from the garage as he sings and plays guitar, laying a hand on the door to feel the music’s thrum.

I’m not sure what I’m seeking in this seeing: assurance that he will be okay in this world he’s walking into, or that I will, once he’s gone?

We are in superposition, both here and not here, entangled, but for how much longer? He’s reading Beloved on the living room couch, and he is studying in his eventual dorm room. I am staring into his stranger-newborn’s face in awe, and I am wondrous at the man who strides, many inches taller than me, through our narrow hall. He is solid and shadow all at once. If I try to fix him in place, he changes shape.

*

My family has always felt small—raised in two households by divorced parents with a variety of struggles, I was an only child until nearly 15, close with just a single first cousin and grandparents who lived across the country in New York. Though I came by lovely siblings in my late teens, I was headed for college not long after, more aunt-like than a sister, from afar. I’ve spent much of my life seeking circles of connection wherever I could, surrounding myself with friendships and community groups and volunteer gigs and more.

I had no idea that having a child of my own with my husband would birth a unique universe of comfort and safety, though it’s not something I want to burden him with, this knowing. Yes, parenting him allowed me to re-parent parts of myself. But I have since learned: My child is not me. He doesn’t need what I need. It sounds obvious—silly even. Who would think such a thing? But this is often how we parent—trying to give them the things we, ourselves, need…until we see otherwise.

*

My husband and I carry every year of our son’s life at once inside us, like rings of a giant redwood tree. We can see his roots and his ever-nearing future all at once, like dissections of a large object on a series of smaller slides. We hold it all—the rough sleepless nights and the wild joyous fun—summers in the ocean, at the local pool; nighttime games with a flashlight and jump scares; bedtimes where we held each other in agony as we tried to let him cry himself to sleep, and many more where he called us back in for another kiss, assurance or song.

Once, when our son was five, I mock-cried into my husband’s neck at the speed of his growing, “He’s five and soon he’ll be ten and then he’ll be in college!”

And now he nearly is.

*

We are living in a space of duality and dichotomy—in which we are both holding on and letting go, appreciating all that we have created while letting it pull apart, strand by strand. Though grief swells inside us, on and off, I comfort myself with one of these dual truths: In building this safe and permanent loving circle around our son, we are, at the same time, giving him freedom to leave.

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Are you in a superposition of some kind—holding multiplicity? Tell me about it.

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Books At The Source Writing Summit. Saturday, March 14. Sebastopol Center for the Arts. 282 S. High Street, Sebastopol, CA.

My panels/classes:

• Fueling Your Passion: Inspiration and Persistence in Creative Expression and Career, 10am.

• Elevating Your Writing to the Next Level. 11am PT.

• Awakening Voice on the Page. 12 pm PT.

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Sunday, March 15, 10 am. Join me for another Sound of Story Workshop in San Francisco—Bookshop West Portal.

(Registration includes a copy of The Sound of Story)

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