Stages

In a recent post, Elaine Yaffe gives us a humorous piece, "Letting Go," about a monitor lizard that she permitted her youngest child to buy and tend in the basement of their home, as it grew into a six-foot long monster (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com). The best humor, Mark Twain wrote, trembles at the edge of tears. "Letting Go" does that, for it conveys the poignancy of a beloved child's leaving home.

The day our eighteen-year-old son left home to report for his compulsory military service in Israel was one of the bleakest of my life. As I watched him, from the open door of our apartment, while he descended the stairs to the street, I told myself that if anything happened to him, it would be my fault. I had brought him to Israel and I had stayed there when I could have left. In fact, his service proved to be a positive experience for him, but of course I couldn't have known that when we said goodbye.

Our daughter also served in the Israeli army, but her joining the service was not traumatic for me, since the military is reasonably safe for women. But after her service, when her mother and I drove her up to a Boston suburb, where she was to begin her undergraduate studies, as we unloaded her suitcases in front of her dormitory, I cried.

They say the only thing worse than your children's leaving home is their not leaving home. Even so, it's hard to let go and allow them to make their own mistakes. It's hard not only because we continue to worry about them, but also because their leaving home marks a milestone in our own lives. We've passed one more stage in life, a reminder of our mortality.

If we're lucky, we pass through other stages too: our children marry, our grandchildren are born, our parents die, we ascend our professional ladders, and we retire. By that time, we've begun to notice the gradual lessening of our strength and energy. As one of my college classmates wrote on the occasion of our 55th reunion, "I spend more and more time doing less and less." We vary as to how we react to this weakening of our capacities. Some of us engage in furious activity in an effort, perhaps, to deny the passage of time. Others rage against it. Still others accept it with grace.

I hope to be among those who accept it with grace, although sometimes it's a struggle. Letting go? I've let go of a lot of things recently. I've finally given up the dream of repeating my long freighter voyages, since physicians and hospitals would be out of reach for weeks at a time; I've had to give up my evening preprandial whisky, a serious blow; and, a more important loss, I've watched my unfinished history pack its bags, to steal a phrase from Billy Collins's "Forgetfulness." When I look at other people my age, these relinquishments seem laughably trivial. I can still walk in Prospect Park, still manage the subway stairs, still meet my friends for lunch and dinner, still indulge myself with the Sunday Times, and still admire the sunsets. I know I'm fortunate. So I'll try to not to bitch about this latest stage, about what I can't do any longer or what I've had to give up. Instead, I'll do my best to enjoy what's left.