One week without My Sunshine

I both can, and can’t, believe Jenny’s been gone a week.  I’m doing okay with it, in fact, in some ways, I’m doing great with it.  Yes, the house is quiet, but I’ve got so much going on in my life that the quiet is good.  I have time and space to think, read, watch TV, spread out my projects, whatever.  I was telling my friends Karen and Beki, that this week I’ve sat in places in my house that I’ve never sat before.  It’s been a bit like finding whole new rooms in my house.  For example, now that I won’t have a dozen teenagers using my dining room as a study hall each week, I moved a comfy chair and ottoman into the room, right by the window, so I can see the neighborhood and enjoy the sunshine.  I’m looking forward to lots of sunny mornings in my chair, especially when it’s too warm (like today) or too cold, to sit outside on my porch.  And, I love the view from my dining room into my living room and kitchen.  I realized all over again this week how much I like how I decorated them.  (And what I want to do to them next!)

I still subconsciously start looking for Jenny to come in the back door right around the times she would have been getting home, whether from school or out with friends, but that’s a habit I’ve had for eighteen years, so it might take a bit for that to go away.  But, it doesn’t make me sad when I realize she won’t be coming home, which is what I would have expected to feel if I had let myself think about it over the last year.

Instead, there have been days when I’ve felt a little liberated that she wasn’t coming home and I didn’t need to worry about having to stop what I was doing and make dinner, run an errand with or for her, or even talk to her.  NOT that I ever minded talking to her or making her dinner.   No, what I mean is, I didn’t have to stop and change direction, and that freedom felt liberating.

I think she’s experiencing the same heady sense of freedom.  She was telling me that her room-mate went home for the weekend and she had the dorm room to herself.  She said she liked having the room to herself, it made her want her own apartment.  That she could see herself living in her own place with her own things, just hanging out enjoying her space.

When she said that, I was so proud.  I’ve done my job, and I’ve done it exceptionally well.  My goal was to raise a strong, independent woman with  the strength of character and self-esteem to forge ahead and find the path to her life and her passions.  I’m so proud that I’ve done exactly that.

Yes, some days it feels like her pulling away is giving me microscopic tears to my heart, but at the same time, I have this immeasurable joy juxtaposed against that feeling from watching her become a young woman who has a backpack full of the tools I gave her slung over her shoulder, happily walking out into the world to conquer it in her own unique way.

And that is pretty freaking satisfying.