Well, This Is What I Think

So after 25 wonderful years – better years than I ever thought possible, better years than I ever dreamed I would be blessed with – you’re leaving home.

Making the big jump. He’s tall and handsome (naturally) but he’s also funny, kind, intelligent and above all humane. So thank God you made a good choice. Can’t say I’m surprised. Smart kid. Always was. Bit dreamy now and then, but head firmly screwed on. Bit like your folks, really. Funny, that.

But I hate it. I hate that I won’t hear your little feet galumphing along the corridor in the mornings. Do you know you don’t look any different waking up today to the way you did when you were two? Eyes screwed up against the light. Hair mussed up. Thump, thump, thump. Yet your face invariably lights up with a welcoming grin when you spot me. You’ll never know how your fresh smile and cheerful “Morning, Dad!” has sent me off able to deal with the day a thousand times. Or more. Just like “Nite nite, God bless, I love you” has given me more gentle sleep than any amount of whisky or meditation tapes or breathing exercises.

I hate it that you won’t always be there to sing the theme songs to the TV shows any more. I can already feel that the start of Star Trek won’t ever be the same. I don’t know who to watch Game with Thrones with any more, cause Mum can’t keep it all straight in her head and she really doesn’t enjoy it, if we’re telling the truth. I hate that your room won’t be untidy any more. I hate that the laundry won’t be full of your crap. I hate that the yard isn’t going to be full of squealing girls high on life anymore.

I am thankful we had you at home as long as we did. But I am going to miss the spontaneous road trips (so often just an excuse to stop going stir crazy on a dull day) when you and Mum seemed to be able to talk non-stop hour after hour. I will miss you both dissolving into giggles. I know I’ve never been one for rabbiting on, and sometimes I’ve even found it a bit off-putting – I do a fine line in grumpy, let’s be frank – and I often missed the joke, but I will miss the togetherness. I really will. I’m sorry I wasn’t better at that bit. What can you do?

I guess part of it is that I just hate the passing of the years. I hate that it means that I have less time left than I have already had. I hate watching your graduation knowing that it’s very likely I will never see your kids graduate. I hate that you can stay out best part of all night carousing – I’ve always been a bit of a carouser on the QT, as you know – but now about ten o’clock my eyes start closing and I can’t face the next day without hitting the sheets real soon, and I don’t want to cramp your style by suggesting we head home. I’m moving into a world of sensible middle class late-middle-aged behavior, full of people who also want to go to bed at ten o’clock, and I hate it.

So last night, I tried the stuff the shrink told me years ago, about how the inner child feels hurt and lost and frightened when change occurs, and the adult tries to either placate it or tell it off, but what’s really needed is the rational advisor quietly trying to put things in perspective. And you know what? It helped. It’s not like you’re moving to the Moon, after all. And I’m sure we can still squeeze in a plan to watch GOT together and even occasionally a Star Trek. And now we have to work at it, instead of just stumbling over one another by default, we’ll probably have better quality time, and probably, in reality, as much time as we’ve had in recent years, anyway. We’ve always been a good team. You’ve always been a colleague and friend as well as our child. We’ll work it out. My trusted advisor assures me we will.

And I am not so old that I can’t remember how exciting it is to make your own way in the world. How the challenge thrills you down to the very heart of your soul, and how you can’t wait to make your own place with the guy you love: your own bits and pieces, artworks, chairs. Building a life together – unique, just for you, never before seen by the world. I want that for you, with all my heart. Be happy: you deserve it more than most people I know.

And yes, I know that sometime you’ll probably have a kid of your own, or maybe more, and then we’ll get wheeled in to babysit and help you grow him/her/them into another amazing generation, and you’ll always want our advice and help, and there are hundreds and thousands of happy moments to come. So what’s happening isn’t an ending, it’s a new beginning, and I get that. I really do.

But it’ll never be the same. And bringing you up was simply the goodest of good things I ever did with my life, and I really never knew it would be and then it happened and then it’s over almost as soon as it begins, and I hate that it’s ending. You don’t need us exactly like you did before. The world turns. Life goes on. And I’ll probably hate that it’s ended even while I love the new stuff, so you may as well get used to that, because you know I am nothing if not complicated, and this, I honestly think, is about the best I can do.

I never liked change at the best of times, and now the changes are so utter, so endless, so fundamental, so … final … that in unguarded moments I find myself shrinking inside. So just know, please, I am trying my best.

“Best kid.” Did I ever tell you that you amaze me?

Go on. You get out on that great big stage and knock ’em dead in the two and ninepennies.

We love you.