My oldest son returned home last night, not triumphant but exhausted and defeated. Three months into what was supposed to be his year-long quarter-century adventure, during which he planned to travel and work his way through Australia and figure out the rest of his life, his entire trajectory has been placed on hold. Unlike Odysseus on the high seas, who desperately struggled to get home after the Trojan War, my son was hoping to stay away, find his fortune and create a new life away from the bedroom where he grew up. His hopes have been dashed, as he slinks back home and joins the newest generation to face an economic disaster that will probably affect him the rest of his life.
My daughter came home from her now-shuttered college, spent a week in her room, and emerged with a new plan. There’s a friend with an apartment near school, and she is leaving today, on a jet plane, to spend the rest of the remote semester sequestered with her. I don’t know when I’ll see her again. It will be good for her emotional health, maybe not so much for mine.
My youngest is also home, wrenched away from his first few months of college, real freedom, after having endured 18 years of being trampled by his siblings. It was finally his turn to shine – and with a great baseball team, strong showings in his classes, a supportive academic atmosphere and a lovely new girlfriend – he was really, really happy. Now he spends most of his days facetiming his girlfriend, who lives several states away, and wondering if that hard won freedom will ever return.
And me? By pure chance, I had two weeks of very few meetings or reasons to leave my house right before the chaos hit, so I’ve mostly been home, with the exception of a couple of trips to the market, for over three weeks. I like my house. In fact, I love my house. We are fortunate to have sufficient space not only for the three returning warriors but for a close friend who is living through upheaval and turmoil in her own life. It’s good for me to have another adult in the house with whom I can laugh and cook and watch reruns of Younger and keep some semblance of sanity. I went from empty nest to full-nest plus, but I am grateful for the ability to be a landing pad for those I love.
But my beloved lives five hours away, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again. We had just begun to talk about the reality of moving and being together more permanently. That conversation is now scuttled, as I am clearly needed to be here for the time being. But I am feeling lost and adrift without him. Even though we have long been able to keep our relationship moving forward as easily by text as being in person, this feels different and he feels farther away. I have skin hunger – I desperately miss being next to the person I love.
Work is worrisome. I work for myself, and although I only have lost one client so far, more are dangling. I’m worried about the long-term economic impact on me. Will I ever be able to sell my house in another downturned economy? What are the far-reaching implications of this freefall? I know that I am not alone in my worries. But there is little comfort in numbers when we are on the precipice of economic and societal collapse.
I think the hardest part of this experience so far, for me, is imagining the impact it will have on my children and their future. So long as I don’t get sick, and manage to make it through until we have a vaccine, I think I can stand being isolated in my house for months to come. I think I will have some work to keep me afloat. And I think that my equanimity will remain intact. I am not trying to home school small children; I am not living in a small New York City apartment with no ability to get outside or get away from my family. I am sitting at a quiet desk, with a dog to walk three times a day, with plenty of food in my pantry and my fridge. I have books and Netflix and social media and Zoom dinners with friends. I am good for now.
In fact, I have a lot of practice at this. I have spent the past five years of my life mostly in this same spot. For the first year, when I was a full-time caretaker, I felt imprisoned. After my husband’s death, I needed to break away. But I quickly came back, and wound up staying very close to home for a very long time. Turns out what I really needed was to sit quietly for years, staring out the window, recovering from the trauma that had imposed itself on my heart and body and my family. The only thing that made me cry during that first year, the year of illness, was the fact that my children were going to lose their dad.
And so it is today. The only thing that is truly frightening me right now is the new losses that are stacking up against my children and their lives. My poor children – they have already endured so much. It’s almost unbearable to think of how their lives may be upended in so many ways. Will college re-open? Will my oldest be able to get a job and truly leave home, as he tried to do three months ago in a big and bold and brave plan? Will there be jobs when they graduate? Will they graduate? Like when their dad was dying and I wondered how I would support them in their grief, these are the questions that are keeping me up at night.
I think I would be going as bonkers as my friends with young children are, if I, too, was trying to teach multiplication tables and maintain my client work at the same time, especially as a single parent. But the emotional pain of the utter collapse of the future on which my children and I have staked our bets is for me an even more traumatic worry. Our young kids, as rambunctious as they might be today, will likely not be scarred emotionally by this crazy moment the way our teens and young adults will be. And as a parent who has wanted nothing but to absorb every molecule of my children’s hurt and fear, and has learned that I can't, knowing that there is nothing I can do about this tremendous shift in our lives and our expectations is the most painful thing of all.
Amazing and powerful. That last paragraph made me lose my breath. I do not have children of my own but my hear breaks for al the young people out there today. Keep telling your story. Your kids are so lucky to have you helping them navigate all this. Hugs, hugs, hugs.
Posted by: Kathy Swayze | 03/27/2020 at 06:06 PM