Paul's Prayers by Susan Anderson

Author:Susan Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Books
Published: 2018-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

23

BROKEN CHAIN

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.”

—Ernest Hemingway

It’s always hard when a child leaves for college. It doesn’t matter if it is your oldest, middle, or youngest. I was preparing dinner. From the kitchen overlooking our great room, my gaze rested on the corner table where birdseed outlined a square where the monstrous birdcage had sat just a few days before. It seemed incredibly empty because there was no cage, no bird, and no song. Calvin the cockatiel had joined Paul at college. I opened one package of chicken instead of two. Our nest was emptying—we’d dwindled from eight to six. There was no need to triple the recipe tonight.

It had been a few days since Paul, age twenty-one, had left for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). I felt several emotions at once. Again, I felt like I did when I sent Paul off to first grade at public school, waiting for the notes to come home from his teacher, the ones that said, “Has trouble focusing. He doesn’t pay attention,” in that jagged, slanted penmanship. I was also sad because no matter what would happen, Paul was beginning a new and exciting chapter in his life. We were turning a page, and there was an underlying fear that something would go terribly wrong. That was the bittersweetness I had to risk tasting. Part of that was that I had to begin filling the void in my life that rearing all of our children into adults opened—that vast blue abyss of “what now?”

Paul was at once a help and a constant, unremitting challenge to us, his parents and legal guardians. With the onset of this major life change we changed from the everyday clamor of clanging pots and pans, slamming doors, slapping fists, and echoed words uttered from Paul’s tunneled voice, to stark silence.

Our second son, Scott, also began his sophomore year at college. I looked again, swallowing the nothingness of our expanded living room, which we spent so much time and money on enlarging. The kids had all helped pack the walls with insulation before the drywall was hung. We all wore long-sleeved flannel shirts and masks. That extra sixteen feet seemed cavernous. I noticed Scott’s shorts still draped the end of the sofa. The ache in my chest motivated me to package up some coffee, toiletries, and ramen noodles from good ol’ home sweet home. I soothed myself, knowing that Scott was succeeding in his business major and navigating his way into manhood.

My wooden legs lumbered over to the kitchen. I remembered how light on my feet I was when the kids were little. I rummaged through the refrigerator. Our daughters would be home from cross-country practice soon, lunging for the peanut butter, and my husband would ask, “What’s for dinner?” Our youngest son Mark would stumble in after wrestling practice with a chronic case of senioritis rolling through his eyeballs, eking out the last two semesters of high school.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.