{"id":433,"date":"2011-02-01T13:39:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T18:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=433"},"modified":"2011-02-01T13:39:33","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01T18:39:33","slug":"mindful-snow-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/mindful-snow-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindful Snow Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My husband and I were waiting at the gate, eager to see if a month overseas had changed our boy. He had turned twenty-one in December and then left us, just two weeks later, to join a group of fellow Theatre and Music majors for an intensive inter-term course in London. All through January, we read his blog posts and his daily theatre reviews, and wondered, \u201cWhen did he become a critic?\u201d It is a strange feeling, to watch your child fly further and further away from the nest, to see a shy teenager metamorphose first into a college student and then, almost before you know it, into a young man ready to make his own way in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis trip has given me a taste of what it is like to be completely responsible for myself,\u201d Henry wrote on his last day in London. \u201cAs I near the end of my junior year of college, my mind frequently turns to what life will be like \u2018in the real world\u2019 without the consistent foundation that I have come to expect from school, home, and family. While I was still under the wing of St. Olaf on this trip, having money, tickets, and accommodations provided for me, the reality that I will have to come up with these things on my own in a year and a half is starting to hit me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reading those words, while my son was winging his way back across the Atlantic, the reality started to hit me, too. Another chapter is almost over. It feels as if his senior year of high school is still close enough to touch, yet his senior year of college is just months away. How did we get here so fast? When our son appeared in the terminal, tired, rumpled, dragging his bag, my heart leapt at the sight of him. There is some latent maternal instinct that surges through me even now, urging, \u201chold on tight and don\u2019t let go.\u201d The three of us went out to dinner, Steve and I mindful of the fact that it was well after midnight London time, but unable to stop our flow of questions. And yet, even though Henry was happy to fill in details, describing the food, the plays, the people, even his drinking exploits at various pubs, it was clear that the real experience, the real growth, was invisible and inexpressible. The trip was his, not ours, no matter how vivid his travelogue. Travel changes us. Age changes us. Distance is distance, and our children grow up and leave home for lives of their own, elsewhere. Just as they should.<\/p>\n

This week, though, Henry is at home. For a few days, he\u2019s back in his bedroom upstairs, he\u2019s eating breakfast with us in the morning, watching re-runs of the Daily Show with me in the middle of the day, sprawling on the couch with a book. He\u2019s also been busy applying for summer jobs and practicing the piano, preparing pieces for a solo concert he intends to give this spring. There is not a moment that I don\u2019t want to seize, prolong, capture, and save.<\/p>\n

Today, I\u2019m grateful for snow. It means that we can skip the errands and the haircut and stay put. The houseguest who was supposed to arrive tonight isn\u2019t going to make it; all flights are cancelled. Good! We\u2019ll eat leftovers from the fridge, light a fire, watch a movie before bed. When Henry sits down at the piano to play a suite of Spanish dances, I stop what I\u2019m doing, become perfectly still, and listen, a grateful audience of one to this work that arises from the depths of his soul.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so aware, these days, that my son\u2019s visits now really are just that — visits. More and more his real life will occur away from us, in places determined by love, luck, career, destiny. Proof-reading his cover letter for a summer job in St. Louis, I\u2019m a little astonished at how much he\u2019s already accomplished in his short life, how much he has to offer a potential employer, how clear he is about his aspirations. I\u2019m excited for him and conscious, too, that a job at a theatre far from home will be one more step in his inevitable journey away from childhood and into adulthood, a journey that began years ago, with kisses and good-byes at classroom doors, and is simply continuing now into more distant territory, as it is certainly meant to do.<\/p>\n

And so, I remind myself that it is futile, and silly, to try to hold on to any of these moments. Why bring on such sadness? How much easier life is when I remember to keep things simple in my heart, when I allow myself to enjoy this wintery week of togetherness without mourning its passing at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of mindfulness,\u201d writes Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein, \u201cas hanging out happily.\u201d What a wonderful instruction for a snow day with a grown-up child at home. What a wonderful instruction for life. And what a pleasure it is to just do that: to hang out happily, and nothing more.<\/p>\n

P.S. Please join me and Karen Maezen Miller for a Mindful Mothering live chat<\/a> on The Motherhood, Thu., Feb. 10, 1 pm EST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My husband and I were waiting at the gate, eager to see if a month overseas had changed our boy. He had turned twenty-one in December and then left us, just two weeks later, to join a group of fellow Theatre and Music majors for an intensive inter-term course in London. All through January, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[17,22,27,30,33,35,39,40,8,10,14],"tags":[264,295,324,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-acceptance","8":"category-change","9":"category-family-life","10":"category-gratitude","11":"category-impermanence-soul-work","12":"category-letting-go","13":"category-midlife","14":"category-mindfulness","15":"category-parenting","16":"category-parenting-teens","17":"category-soul-work","18":"tag-letting-to","19":"tag-mindfulness-2","20":"tag-parenting-2","21":"tag-sylvia-boorstein","22":"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\/433","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=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/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=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}