When your kids leave home it happens in stages.
First comes school, then maybe a sleep over, maybe summer camp. Then perhaps a school trip comes along and then college or work or military follows and all too quickly they are out of the house.
Two years ago I took our oldest daughter to move into to her college dorm.
But I always knew she wouldn’t settle in that city. I knew she would come home.
Then our daughter went to study in New York this summer.
And decided to move to continue to study there.
So we are on a plane and no matter how much I fool myself I know this is a much bigger deal. She is moving to a city she could stay in. Her career opportunities will be there and they will be great. She will come to visit and she might come to work for a time, but we have moved into a brave new world.
One where we both have to be brave, And strong and invincible.
Home is where your heart is
And in two years…my heart may be in a third as our youngest spreads her wings.
As always we head back to Rumi for words of wisdom about raising our kids with proper perspective.
On Children
Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
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