Recalibration is part of my show The Vestibule (which is available for benefit performances and touring–please contact me.) Thanks to one of my listeners, I discovered this favorite piece never got hooked up quite right when the site went through it’s transition–so here it is in a new recording. It’s timed about right for folks sending their “little ones” off to college. What a process–Congratulations to you. It’s also In Print.
This is a piece from The Vestibule. It’s that time of year when we send our little fledglings off to grow some more… Well, both sides grow.
Recalibration
The liquid lubricates my eye sockets against the everyday too-much. The trickle continues around the back of my throat and along the sides of my neck–warm and gentle. It slows my breathing and my chest finally gives up all the stale air it’s been holding just-in-case.
This salt water loosens the memory, gratitude, sadness, perspective, doubt, uncertainty, and longing I’m usually too busy to feel. It distends my head with the bubble of a sob that might escape, but it doesn’t. The doubts come instead. Then the inventory of the difficulties this day, this week, this month. Finally I notice gravity cradling my body. It sucks me into release I rarely know.
I remember the weight of my belly full of her—my most intimate acquaintance I’d never met. I would think about this child kicking inside—I’d go on to something else—and all the while I was growing her in every miraculous way. Once she brought her long body outside, I’d wrap myself around her on sleepless nights and slow my breathing to trick hers into sleep—a cure for all the strangeness of the world. Often, it would work and I could hold this package of dreams and love in peace.
And now, I’ve sent her off to college, off to refine and refresh those dreams and make them her own. I hope I got it all in there.
My girl already carries way too much wisdom in the cruelties-of-the-world department: the disillusionment of divorce, bad judgment, cultural lies. She learned to speak “adult” to cope with 50 year old adolescents.
“You, fresh-faced ingénues and fascinating elders, cross down center.
Remember your parents—stage dressing.
I spent the summer in retail therapy for the strains of departure—laptops and Ipods and plugs and clocks and phones and cords. I remember I faced motherhood with a similar electronics buy-a-thon. I lost control of my body to a space alien and suddenly I needed a big TV, a VCR and a microwave. Oh I know, these things have nothing to do with a tiny little baby. That’s when I learned— electronic gadgetry is so comforting in transition.
Tonight’s her first night in the dorm. “Goodnight my darling daughter, best I’ve ever done and all the whole world to me. I’m off to the hotel.” She’s so gone.
Walking across the campus that next morning I feel pleasure and calm just knowing she sleeps here. They seem to want her, they want to grow her. She seems pretty comfortable here. Waiting for her at breakfast, all that old anxiety fills my eyes and chest and breath; she feels like a limb again.
“Hi Honey. I’m leaving today–once I find the perfect clip lamp.” It’s all about the clip-lamp now.
There might be some phantom longing. I wish I could always help her. And don’t I know better. The next time I see her she’ll be floating across the sidewalk, like those other daughters I observe. A woman, a daughter. She’ll pull into focus, and become My Girl again—my special girl—for a bit. That moment is more sweet marmalade than it’s always been. Then I’ll return to my world.
The ground is beckoning to her, and she’s planting: studies and mastery; friendships and love affairs; people and solitude. She’ll plan, she’ll do, she’ll have and she’ll be.
The ground is beckoning to me too. I’m pruning, thinning starts. My time feels like my own for the very first time: white porcelain filled with warm custard, golden. New needs and desires, mine.
Well, an inventory of Big Words has to mention Friendship, doesn’t it? It’s a word that gets richer for me.I’m grateful for wonderful friends.
