Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock....

After it began to rain yesterday, and my husband could no longer work in his garden, he came in and was rattling around the kitchen. Suddenly he stopped and looked at me with a peculiar expression on his face, and said, "It's been a year since Chris moved out."

Yep. A little over a year, actually. When the move took place, I was at the choir school in Jordanville, so when I walked in the door at last, and brought my suitcase into our bedroom, I was confronted, at the other end of the hall, with the sight of Chris's bare bookshelves. It was like a small knife slicing right into the solar plexus. Now a year has gone by, and we have seen him twice in that year. He has grown enormously in self-confidence, knowing that he can, after all, make it on his own in life; he has a job he loves, and has mastered the art of finding his way around a strange community and making it home. He seems to have found his own place in the world, and that's a beautiful thing to see.

However, just because the kids go out on their own and you're no longer "responsible" for them, doesn't mean you stop wondering if they're OK, if they're warm enough in the winter or close to heat stroke in the summer, if they're getting enough to eat, if their finances are OK, if their friends are "good enough" for them (as if there were such a thing as friends who deserved your Wonderful Kid)... The list goes on and on. I have a dreadful suspicion that I will be fretting into eternity about great-great-great grandchildren -- or maybe I should just leave that to their great-great grandparents???