Waking Up Without My Daughter

They say that trees in autumn show us the beauty of letting go. I think that’s lovely, in theory. I’m less convinced when it’s my turn.

Things are the same. Until they’re not.

Every September for the last 13 years, I’ve known what to expect.  It’s been a blessing, really. Get out of bed, go to the bathroom, go to the kitchen, make a cup of tea (iced in summer, hot in winter).  Wake up my children and fix them breakfast.  Cereal for my son. A bagel with cheese for my daughter.  Fruit for both. Jockey with my daughter for time in our one bathroom (“May I come in now? Please?”)

The routine has shifted some over the years, depending on where we are living and where my children’s schools are. These past years, my husband has been able to drop my son off at school on his way to work. They usually left first. My daughter and I would follow later, because she needed the maximum amount of time available to get ready. There was a short season after she got her drivers license, before the car died, that she drove herself to school. Most of the time, though, I dropped her off. I didn’t mind. Time with her in the car, listening to music or just talking before her day started? It was a gift.

Day after day after day after day after day this is what happened.  This routine is what I expected, what I sometimes dreaded, what I mostly treasured.  It’s what I knew. It was ordinary, and it was holy.

Until it changed.

Suddenly I am waking up without my daughter.

She is exactly where she needs to be: at UCLA, living in the dorms, meeting new people, embarking on her next adventure. She tells me that she sang karaoke in the lounge with her roommates the other day, that it was “fun,” and that people are “not judgy like they were in high school.” She is discovering that she might like tea, a little. She had a crepe with Nutella for breakfast, just one of many seemingly gourmet options that she gets to enjoy on her basic UCLA meal plan, which is truly so much more than basic.

And me?

I guess I am where I need to be, too.

Tell me, what choice do I have?

Things are the same. Until they’re not.

Here’s what I know: my routine that seemed so steady, so predictable, so comforting, so solid? It wasn’t, not really. I was blessed that it lasted for so many years. It could have changed anytime.  It wouldn’t have taken much: a car accident, fire, hurricane, tornado, flood,  diagnosis. And it’s not just tragedies that rewrite our cherished routines. They also shift after happy events, after things we long and pray for: a wedding, a birth, a new job. Or going off to college.

Today, my daughter is gone, and I am still here. I am sitting at the same kitchen table, drinking tea from the same mug. I have the same blue (terrible) computer that keeps kicking me out of my word processing program.  These are remnants of the old routine, of the familiar. But someone is missing. Someone won’t be coming home from cross country practice in a few hours, sitting at this table, doing her homework. Someone has moved along.

Here’s my hope, because there has to be hope somewhere, my friends. Maybe in the midst of this change, there will be an opening and an invitation for me. For me. Maybe there will be more space for me to find a different dream, to seek out the joy stream and let it carry me someplace new, too.