My son moved out. The top bunk where he sleeps is empty. His closet is bare. The trophies that proudly indicate that he ‘participated’ are no longer on his dresser. Gone are the halcyon days of sharing a room with his two younger brothers. Wanderlust set in, urging him to depart for the new horizon formerly known as The Guest Room.
Truth be told, I suggested the move a few weeks ago when I noticed a growing level of annoyance between the older brother, 8, and the two younger ones, 5 and 3, who tend to follow a little too closely on his heels. They are always there! Touching his stuff! Being not big enough to hit!
I thought a little distance between them might do us all some good. And so this past Sunday evening the move commenced. I was in charge of transferring his entire wardrobe, and he spent twenty minutes arranging his ‘student of the week’ certificate in its new location.
This change was challenging for me on two levels. The first is that it is yet another indication that my big boy is not a baby anymore. He needs his space. He’s got stuff that needs its space. I am thrilled with his increasing responsibility, his ability to appreciate forms of humor other than the knock-knock joke, and his growing worthiness as an opponent in games that are not Go-Fish. But it appears that this growing up thing will happen whether or not I am on board, and I am wary of anything that is not entirely in my control. Take heed, maturity. I’m not sure about you. I’ll be watching.
The other bump in the road to the guest room is that in spite of its name, for the past 7 years it has in fact had a permanent occupant – my stuff. I failed in my attempts to find a more descriptive word than ‘stuff’. The word junk does not do my stuff justice, because if it were indeed junk it would have been thrown out long ago. My college notebooks from courses on the Latter Prophets are not junk. I will get around to rereading them one day. The word miscellany is a bit to highbrow to describe a bunch of old t-shirts that I no longer wear, but save as proof for anyone who doubts that I danced the night away at the great Lag BaOmer dance-a-thon of 2001. So stuff it is.
I am not overly sentimental. I got rid of a lot of stuff. But there is only so much you can give to the Veterans before they tell you that while they appreciate your generosity, they don’t need your textbooks from social work 101. I don’t have any books that teach me how to properly interact with Veterans. This was covered in social work 103, by which point I had wised up and stopped buying the books.
There was a positive side to the move, however. I expected that 3 and 5 would be highly upset by their leader’s departure. How can they keep track of his every move if he resides elsewhere? But they surprised me – 5 saw it as an opportunity to promote himself to the top bunk, and 3 was equally excited to graduate to the lower bunk. Musical beds, it was win-win-win-lose (the loser being my now homeless stuff).
This made me realize that my middle children are far more well-adjusted than I was at their age. If I couldn’t see my older sister at all times I became certain that she was off somewhere having fun without me. Though family history reveals that she was quite inclusive and tolerant of her tagalong little sister, a middle child’s insecurity can have lasting impact. I have long suspected that in her piles of stuff she has multiple t-shirts that say things like ‘I had more fun than Kally at the Thanksgiving 5k of 1994!’
So three cheers for secure children, and one ambivalent cheer for children who grow up. All this cheering has made me wonder if my sister is cheering louder and more excitedly with some really cool and popular people. I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a thorough re-examination of Isaiah.
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