you're gonna make me lonesome when you go

I broke the news while we were eating dinner last week and it was about as well received by my family as a pro-hunting lecture would be at a PETA convention. You're leaving us?! wailed my daughter, Priscilla, looking all desperate and hurt and betrayed, offended. I'll only be gone a couple of days, sweetheart, I assured her, thinking she'd perhaps misunderstood my explanation, that maybe when I said, long weekend in Indianapolis, she'd heard, three month safari in Africa, but I was wrong. 

A COUPLE OF DAYS?!! WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT YOU?!

My friend, Jennifer, just had a baby, this gorgeous baby: 

and I am beside myself anxious to get my hands on him. There are three of us (all mothers ourselves) heading out there shortly to do what we can to help and to celebrate with Jen, her husband, Nathan, and son, Owen, this remarkable blessing named Finn. It's hard to believe that my kids are at an age now where my presence, while certainly preferable, is not mandatory. I am stuck somewhere between giddiness and nervousness because of it. 

I've taken a turn as of late - it feels like I've just emerged from a cave of hibernation, a sometimes dark, mostly cozy little shelter from the bigger, stroller-pacifier-nap-free world outside where people do things besides change diapers and breast feed (huh?), and my eyes are having a hard time adjusting.  For most of my adult life, I've been either pregnant or nursing (sometimes both) and there is an element of fear in starting over as a thirty-four- year-old woman with, because of my children's ever increasing independence, the energy and wherewithal to pursue dreams and ideas that up until this point have lain dormant. It's scary as heck to put yourself out there and yet, at the same time, sort of thrilling. I believe it's healthy for me to develop, at this stage, my own skills and interests lest I become an overly meddlesome, micro-managing, suffocating kind of parent whose entire sense of well-being rides on the actions and attitudes of my endearingly quirky and enigmatic off-spring.

You'll be fine, I tell them, because they will be. Troy is more than capable of holding down the fort while I'm gone. No, the challenge will be in my head where feelings of guilt and apprehension will battle those of gratitude and excitement for control of my thoughts and emotions.  It's more than a weekend get away we're dealing with here, it's my embarkment into another, unfamiliar, more hands-off,  phase of motherhood - it's my chance, their chance, our chance to fly.