They grow up.\u00a0 They leave home.\u00a0 And then, of course, they come back.\u00a0 They\u00a0 return bearing bags of dirty laundry, stray socks, T-shirts you\u2019ve never seen before, strange cords for charging various digital devices.\u00a0 They are different, in a way you can\u2019t put your finger on.\u00a0 Taller, yes, but that\u2019s not quite it.\u00a0 Bigger in some other way; deeper, with knowledge that won\u2019t be shared with you. They are clean shaven (because they know you love that).\u00a0 They wear their hair short by choice — now that you\u2019re no longer the one saying, \u201cYou need a haircut.\u201d\u00a0 They use words like \u201cfundamentalist\u201d and \u201cmetaphorical\u201d and are eager to test your knowledge on constitutional amendments and C.S. Lewis.\u00a0 They want to know your thoughts about original sin, and whether you can still scan a line of poetry.\u00a0 They realize that you will be of no help on the paper they have to write analyzing the thematic and rhythmic structure of Gershwin\u2019s \u201cAn American in Paris.\u201d\u00a0 They are hungry.\u00a0 Really, really hungry.\u00a0 You go through a dozen eggs a day, a gallon of orange juice, a gallon of milk.\u00a0 They spend hours on Facebook.\u00a0 Their rooms, pristinely vacant these last months, are instantly in shambles.\u00a0 You are not the least bit tempted to pick their jeans up off the floor.\u00a0 They want you to watch clips of the Daily Show at midnight, and you do, even though your bedtime lately has been closer to 10:30 than 12. (Well, admit it, you\u2019re often in bed even earlier than that.)\u00a0 They ask for the car keys, and you\u2019re happy to hand them over.\u00a0 When you say, \u201cBe home for dinner,\u201d they don\u2019t even protest.\u00a0 (They appreciate your cooking!)\u00a0 When they\u2019re running late, they text, to let you know.\u00a0 Their friends come over. . .and seem genuinely happy to see you — eager to talk, hang around in the kitchen, tell you about their lives as they eat your food. They say \u201cthank you\u201d for the meal and put their dishes into the dishwasher without being asked. You hear the thwack of ping pong balls in the basement, cries of victory, deep laughter.\u00a0 You don\u2019t tell anyone what time to go to bed, or worry about what they\u2019re doing down there after you\u2019re asleep.\u00a0 You wake up at four, in a dark and silent house, and allow your thoughts to drift.\u00a0 The very thing you once took for granted — two boys asleep in their own beds down the hall — has become rare.\u00a0 You used to think that you would never get \u201cyour\u201d life back, the one where you got to choose how to spend your own time, or what to watch on TV, or how loud the music in the car should be.\u00a0 But of course, it\u2019s been your life all along, and those little boys were always on their way out the door, growing up and growing away from you, even as they were pressing your buttons and driving you nuts and forgetting their homework and not brushing their teeth.\u00a0 You wonder if you paid enough attention, if you cherished those days enough, if you ever really grasped the fact that your life was always in the process of turning into something else.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to be too hard on that younger, more impatient self.\u00a0 But you are perhaps a little wiser now, more attuned to the moment, how precious it is.\u00a0 And so you don\u2019t mind being awake, listening to your husband\u2019s gentle breath rising and falling beside you, the dog\u2019s soft snore, the wind tossing the bare branches outside the window.\u00a0 Everyone is home, glad to be here. You give thanks for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They grow up.\u00a0 They leave home.\u00a0 And then, of course, they come back.\u00a0 They\u00a0 return bearing bags of dirty laundry, stray socks, T-shirts you\u2019ve never seen before, strange cords for charging various digital devices.\u00a0 They are different, in a way you can\u2019t put your finger on.\u00a0 Taller, yes, but that\u2019s not quite it.\u00a0 Bigger in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,35,39,8,9,10,14],"tags":[175,301,324,387],"class_list":{"0":"post-282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-family-life","8":"category-letting-go","9":"category-midlife","10":"category-parenting","11":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","12":"category-parenting-teens","13":"category-soul-work","14":"tag-family-life-2","15":"tag-motherhood","16":"tag-parenting-2","17":"tag-sons","18":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}