SEPARATION ANXIETY
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It had been hours . . . or at least it felt like it.
I was sitting on the floor outside the bedroom, listening to the cries coming through the door. The book said a baby had to learn to self-soothe—and the only way to do that was to put the baby to bed and let him cry.
So there we were. I was crying on the floor outside the door, and he was crying in his crib. We were all exhausted and nobody was getting any sleep. We were new parents; we didn’t want to ruin our baby, so we were trying to do everything right. As it turned out, once we let him try it, he quickly got the hang of it and learned to sleep by himself.
It was me . . . I was the problem. Not only had I read the book about how to parent, I also read the book about SIDS. Sudden infant death syndrome terrified me. When I was sitting on the floor outside the door, I would go back in as soon as he was quiet and poke him to make sure he was breathing. I don’t remember having issues with our daughter. We put her to bed, and she went to sleep. Further proof that it was my anxiety.
My anxiety got the best of me once again on the first day of school. At home, we had been talking about school—how fun it was going to be, meeting the new teacher, and the chance to make new friends. I used to love back-to-school shopping. New school clothes for the kids, and new outfits for me. It just occurred to me . . . that’s what has happened to my wardrobe! No more back-to-school shopping. I have been rotating the same outfits for years. Last week, the sole of my shoe fell off! As I walked down the sidewalk, I left pieces of black rubber, like a trail of ebony crumbs, behind me. The trail led into my office—where I sat at my desk with only one shoe.
Well, back to the first day of school. It went exactly as planned. We walked to the classroom door, and in they went without a look back. I walked out to my car and cried in the parking lot. At least I looked good in my new outfit!
And now, let’s fast forward twenty years. It’s happening all over again. Sending the kids off to college was easy compared to this. When they went to college, I knew they would come home for the summer and for the holidays. My friends joked that their kids were certain to move back home after they graduated from college, which didn’t sound too bad to me. I would rationalize that grown children living with their parents wasn’t the sad failure the joke would suggest. I liked having my kids around.
When our son moved across the country, we said we would get together for holidays and take vacations together. That, of course, never happened. Sending the first one out into the world was hard, but we still had our daughter at home, so we weren’t alone—YET.
Now her day has come. She is graduating college and moving across the country—the other side of the country from her brother. Experience suggests that even though we may plan to get together for holidays and vacations, life has a way of changing our plans. I’ve tried to remind myself that this is success! We raised our children to be successful and self-supporting. My husband should get the words “Off the Books” tattooed onto his forehead, he says it so much.
The scene of me crying at the airport is playing out in my mind on a repeating loop. It’s ugly—mascara running down my cheeks in black streaks and crumpled tissues lie in a wad at my feet. The crazy thing is . . . I’m not a crier! I’m a fixer. But this is one thing I can’t fix. The kids are doing exactly what they should be doing.
I’m the one with separation anxiety.