Life

As you may or may not know my oldest son graduated from college last May, moved to New York City and got an RN job in a cardiac unit at New York Presbyterian/Columbia, rated as a top ten heart hospital in the country. Not bad for a kid right out of nursing school. His goal is to become a nurse practitioner and the hospital will pay for the additional two years of education needed at Columbia University. Of course it will take longer than two years since he will be working full time while doing it.

Since he's been gone I've seen him three times. I've been there once and he's come home twice. I've been doing pretty well but lately I've been missing him terribly. It all started on April 14. He had gone down to Florida to visit his grandparents for a few days and the night before he was to fly home I said to hubby, "Kevin comes home tomorrow!" Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, his home is no longer here but in NYC. That seemed so sad for me. Hubby then reminded me that he and his girlfriend will be coming up Memorial Day weekend. Hooray.

But sometimes life...

gets in the way of life.

Seems that after the schedule was posted and up for a while it got changed and he no longer has enough time to come home. The same thing happened with his Florida trip, they changed the schedule, he had to change his flight and leave a day later.

He's pissed and I'm blue but just told him that in the game of life things happen. I've been in the work force for 33 years and know all about planning my vacation around other people, last minute changes in schedules, bosses that don't care if you have plans but he's new to it. Your work life gets in the way of other parts of your life and most of the time that's your priority. I guess it's hard to take since it's happened twice now.

He's finding out that in the adult world things aren't as easy. You have more responsibilities, more bills to pay and you're pulled in more directions with more demands on your time. I'm not going to add to that by going all melancholy on him. It's been hard for me to go from playing an involved role as a mother to a spectator mother. There's a small empty space in my heart with him gone on his own. I wonder, does this feeling ever go away for a mother? Will you always miss your children like this? I should ask my own mother, she's coming over today and we're driving out to see my youngest son at college and take him out for lunch. Hooray!