How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen…in my case, Spain and Australia.
My son, Luke, is returning from his fall semester of college in Melbourne just in time for Thanksgiving. Since he is arriving the night before, he might be so jet lagged, he’ll sleep through the holiday. Luke, my husband, Neil, our 15-year-old daughter, Meg, and I will probably not make it to my mother-in-law’s house for dinner. To have my family together once more, though, I am perfectly fine with celebrating on Friday with turkey sandwiches from the deli and no trimmings.
I just read an article that people who are grateful suffer less from depression, mysterious aches and pains, and are also less anxious, lonely and neurotic. My gratitude is somewhere up around Mach 5 right now, so I’m pretty sure I won’t know any of those aforementioned symptoms again until way into the New Year, when I must accept that Luke is gone again; this time to Boston for his second semester.
That is just a short-term distraction though, as the long-term issue is that our home is really now just a pit stop until his next travel opportunity presents itself.
I saw this coming the minute I sent him off to Lisbon last Easter with his high school. He was so at ease with the idea of being away from home and seeing another part of the world. I guess I wasn’t really surprised then, with all the opportunities he had for college, that he chose the one that would take him to the other side of the globe for four months.
I’ll have Luke back for four weeks; then it’s on to Massachusetts. Since the engineering program he’s enrolled in touts itself as “global,” there is already talk of a summer in Costa Rica, internships in California, and co-op (work) programs in London, Ireland, Greece, Singapore…you get the idea.
The world is truly his oyster, but it is my frenemy. I am both exhilarated and petrified that he will be out there. My bragging will attest that I am proud that everything up until now has led to his being able to experience the wondrous life that lays before him. But, as someone who as already seen the world, near as well as far, I know it is not always a friendly or kind place, and well, a mother worries.
But I will let him go and see him off to wherever, reminding him that home is also a destination worth visiting as well.
