Time is Never Time at All

For the past few weeks, while I’m driving back from dropping a kid at school or attending a final meeting, I find myself winding my way through the hills of Oak View and crying. The sun is smiling down at me from a blue perfect sky, tiny yellow buds bow their heads in respect. Windows rolled down, the rush of 50mph air and Billy Corgan’s voice push over me.

You can never ever leave
Without leaving a piece of youth

Four weeks minus one day until graduation. Two months until departure for college. Life is rushing by at break neck speed. Last night was prom. Her final and his first. They looked like an Animé dream. He was crowned Prince. She’s driving now and hasn’t come home from sleeping at her friend’s house. “When do you want me home?” she texted. It was everything I could do to not text back, “Now and forever.”

And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel

This was always coming. We were headed to this moment, saw it approach in the distance, rejoiced over the impending arrival, and now I feel like a cartoon character digging my heels into the dirt trying to slow down a runaway train with my body. Instead of slowing time down, it spins faster and faster towards the moment when everything changes and this life together is over.

So I sit and I feel. Held prisoner in the moment, all I can do is let the wave of sadness, loss and joy wash through and over me. Life in the shore break, held to the sandy bottom until the thunder roll passes and I can surface to breathe.

When I finally break that surface, lungs aching, thoughts racing, they are there. Laughing and making plans for the next chapter of their new lives, voices filled with hope and excitement, the razor edges of their anxiety softened, smoothed away by the thrill of finales. Where I feel loss, they feel joy. Relief is my life vest.

Believe
Believe in me
Believe, believe

That life can change
That you're not stuck in vain
We're not the same, we're different

They will move on. They are already different. Together they will change the world. God bless there will always be together. And there will always be change. My sadness is equal to my exaltation. They have made it through the darkness, and although there will be more dark nights to come, they have this one to look back on and know that they survived.

And you know you're never sure
But you're sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light

This life called parent is devastatingly brilliant. The alchemy of time and love reshapes me, transforms me into something I never knew I could be. A rider of storms rather than a maker of them. While I continue to be raw emotion hiding inside a shell of Target clothes and fancy moisturizers, at least I am learning to experience the aliveness of those emotions and the moments that trigger them. Yes, I am sad, but what is sadness except love that understands time.

We'll crucify the insincere tonight
(Tonight)
We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight
(Tonight)
We'll find a way to offer up the night
(Tonight)
The indescribable moments of your life
(Tonight)
The impossible is possible tonight
(Tonight)

Believe in me as I believe in you
Tonight
—Smashing Pumpkins, “Tonight, Tonight”