Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins

[hazelchaz]

In six weeks, our precious angel is leaving home.

Not going far - she's not even leaving the county - but the move to an apartment near UC Irvine is a major step. She's taking some of her furniture (notably her bed) with her, so her bedroom is going to look very different. She's given us permission to put the spare bed in there and use it as a guest room. (Although she'll still have clothes in her closet, and has asked us not to repaint just yet.)

She's not going to be a stranger - we'll be giving her a living allowance (as will her father) and she'll come home to collect the checks and have dinner with us. (Free meals are going to become more important to her -- since she's not living in a dorm, the meals aren't included in her rent.)

We'll be empty-nesters; she doesn't plan to come home for the summer, for example. And if all goes as we currently expect, in a few years she'll move on from UC Irvine to wherever she pursues her Master's Degree in ancient history. I have hundreds of photos* of her, but I recognize that she and I, and my camera, aren't going to see each other nearly as often anymore.

Do you know that I stay up for her when she comes home late? (Unless I'm out later than she is, such as at LASFS/Solley's, of course. Or out of town.) She likes it, even as she protests that I don't need to do it anymore, because if I'm up she doesn't have to find her housekey. This means that she hardly ever is the one to turn out the lights -- because she's not the last one to go to bed. There have been times I've dozed off in the bedroom, and got up at midnight or 1 am to find that she's already come home and the lights are still on. Kind of funny... but it's one small way her habits are going to change when she and Carmel are sharing the apartment on their own.

Did you know that one night I was up late, and a friend of hers from high school came over, running away from home? A number of her friends knew that if push came to shove, they'd find safe harbor here. One of them actually showed up, and stayed with us for a few days before returning to her family (although for a moment there it looked like she might move in with her grandma up past Bakersfield somewhere). And ever since that night, if I'm up, I keep the porch light on until I go to bed. One of Maria's friends might need a friendly welcome in the middle of the night.

Friends all around me, near and far, are having children (or celebrating birthdays of their pre-school podlings), and the daughter of my heart is all grown up. I've been a part of her daily life for twelve years. I knew, intellectually, that it was temporary -- but it seems like it doesn't really sink in until the end is smack in your face.

Department of odd coincidences: When I moved out of my parents' house, I did it while they were away on a trip. library_lynn and I will be at Armadillocon when Maria's expecting to move out of here.. of course, my folks didn't know to expect me gone when they returned, so that's a little different...

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*More than 900 photos on my server. We also have some that we've been meaning to scan in...

Comments

I was talking to my mom recently...

[theatre-nerd.livejournal.com]

She said something similar about my brother. She said that she stays up when he is out during the wee hours of the morning just messing around doing who knows what. She did the same thing when I was living at home. I still don't understand why. She says I will understand if I am ever a mom. Perhaps I will.

Re: I was talking to my mom recently...

[hazelchaz]

library_lynn can't stay up that late, but it's easier for me. Why do it? It's an expression of love, I think. Like saving out the parts of the newspaper you like. You could just as easily go to the newspaper pile and fish them out yourself, but someone doing it for you is doing it to be nice.

And with staying out late... part of it is wanting to know if we should worry. We don't usually need to worry, of course. But there was that one time Maria never came home. I fell asleep on the couch sometime after 2am, and library_lynn woke me up about 5-ish when she woke up (and I still wasn't in bed yet), and there was no sign of Maria. It being a Friday, there was a good chance she'd decided to spend the weekend at her father's house. But then we found a message on the answering machine from one of Maria's co-workers, saying Maria hadn't showed up at work. That pushed our panic button!

To make a long story shorter, we called over to her father's house, apologized for waking him up and asked if she was over there. Which she was. And she had made it to work, but a little late.

For about half an hour though, we were spinning dire scenarios that would explain the few facts we had...

Postscript

[hazelchaz]

We recommend that any parent who has a child with her own car, should also make sure the child has a cell phone. And if you're going to panic, do it at 2:00 am, not 5:00 am.

Re: I was talking to my mom recently...

[glittercat13.livejournal.com]

Yep. I've been there before. *sigh* What I didn't know was that after they're fully out the door and on their own, you still worry and, occassionally wake up with those 5am jitters - and you can't just walk down the hall to make sure they're safely tucked away asleap in bed. I'm guessing that the habit holds and ya never really quit thinkin'/worryin' about them. :)