Big Pond

Beginnings. They excite me, but after that first step they stress me like an icy drive in a minivan.

Take the week, last September, when my husband and I hauled our daughter's stuff across town to her college dorm room. Relief and joy for her made me smile. She'd reached an eagerly anticipated milestone. And so had I. As a mom who chose home-schooling for my kids, sending my girl to live at the higher learning institution where she'd already excelled the previous year plopped a crown on my success. Her leaving in this manner was what we'd worked for.

Nobody told me, though, that the in-house way I've educated our two children set me up for major trauma when my first, my built-in girlfriend, left. Actually, at least one other home-teaching mother had made her best effort to warn me of dramatic emotional surges a-comin', but I guess some things can't be handled until they crash into you.

Since last fall life has fluxed a bit for me. My son and I adjust to sharing space at home without his sister's lively input. My husband evidences great patience listening to my philosophical theorizings that in the past would have been fielded by our daughter. My parents, in-laws and close friends preview pages of progressing, unpolished fiction. And now you of the blogsphere read words about these latest steps taken by one manic, middle-aged steering wheel-gripper.

I don't expect responses (except perhaps once in a while by the aforementioned Job-like friends and relatives). If something I post here strikes a familiar chord, though, feel free to mention it. I launch into the pond of cyber-writing with a very small plop and several anxious flailings, but at least it's a start.