Up Kid Creek

We have a fifth grader leaving elementary and a 12th grader leaving life as we know it for college. It will be the first time the little school down the street is no longer our school, belonging to us. My kids grew up around me like trees. I only planned for the little sprouts. Now they're growing all over the place, taking over the garden.

I was in the river with the horses which has been my replacement for kids, disappearing into the trail and the jungle nearby. It's only a dirt path through the woods with a creek running through it, but it's quiet and there are birds and the sound of water there. One of my moms was texting me and we were talking about how the kids grow up and all that love you give and they grow up because love doesn't stop that from happening, it might even assist that. You do it anyway, because you have to, you are love's prisoner, and yet here I am at  the end of whatever this ending is, this new section, and there's all these handfuls of sadness, dripping out from between the fingers. No way to contain it, like their whole lives really, like grabbing handfuls of water and not being able to hold any of it. It's ridiculous, really.

But I'm still coming to the water, here and at home. Because I can hear it, and smell it and see it and feel it, and there's comfort in it. Because of all the beauty and overgrowth. I come here because I belong here and it calls to me.

Like my mom said to me, even though there's all this heartbreak and bittersweet feeling as it changes, and grows away, you're not sorry you did it. You'd do it again, you'd give everything again even though there's nothing you can show that you've gained from it. Except that hulking soul, raging around you, fully fed, and your heart eighteen times huger and well lived in like your favorite family living room couch.

You're solid, you know yourself, the love hurts because it's been given freely and continues to flow out with no way to stop it. It's funny, the way things that are out of control are funny, because of the danger of being so open. How many chances do you get to do that, in life, where you give because you can't see up ahead where you might be in a lifeboat surrounded by ocean and no one else in sight. Because you don't care where you end up. Because you have that little baby in your arms.

And your little 12th grader. He is six feet tall. He is still that little curly haired baby, nestled next to me.