{"id":32102,"date":"2020-10-10T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T07:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=32102"},"modified":"2020-10-10T00:01:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-10T07:01:55","slug":"i-miss-my-grown-up-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/i-miss-my-grown-up-children\/","title":{"rendered":"I Miss My Grown-Up Children — More Than I Can Say. Sheltering at Home Week 30"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I-miss-my-grown-up-children.<\/a>
Working out in our guest room, I realized how much I miss our grown-up children. Clockwise, right to left: foam exercise roller, college texts, laptop, plie squat. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

October 9, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 30<\/strong><\/p>\n

This morning, during my Pilates class, mid-squat, I burst into tears.<\/p>\n

I was doing my workout via Zoom, as usual, in the guest room.<\/p>\n

It’s our guest room, but it’s also the place we store all the stuff our son accumulated as a kid. Baby scrapbooks, soccer trophies, high school yearbooks, souvenirs of a post-college trip to India. Stuff he doesn’t have room for in the house he now shares with his family, two thousand miles away.<\/p>\n

A Pli\u00e9 Interrupted<\/strong><\/h5>\n

As I lower myself into a pli\u00e9 squat, my eyes land on Peter’s college books on the bookcase in front of me. Books by Derrida and Kierkegaard. Novels by Louise Erdrich and Cormac MCarthy. Books on poker, basketball, chess.<\/p>\n

On top of the bookcase, on my laptop, the Pilates instructor and a dozen classmates are deep into their squats. But I am in tears. I feel Peter looking out at me from the things he’s left behind, and suddenly I miss him.<\/p>\n

And We Haven’t Seen Them Since<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I last put my arms around Peter in January. He was here for his birthday, along with his wife, his little girls, his sister and her husband.\u00a0That was before Covid-19. We haven’t seen any of them since.<\/p>\n

He is tall and I am short. When we get ready to hug, my arms go around his waist, his arms go around my shoulders. It used to be the other way around. My arms around his little neck, his small arms around my waist. Eventually the day came — he must have been about 11 — when we switched things up. My arms around his middle, his arms around my neck.<\/p>\n

\"i-miss-my-grown-up-children\"<\/a>
Christina, left, as a toddler, made this scary mask when she was seven.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I keep busy these days. There is writing to do. A patio remodel to oversee. An upcoming election to fret over.<\/p>\n

Mostly, I choose not to think about the thousands of miles — as well as the months, past and future — that lie between me and Peter. Working out in Peter’s guest room, I keep my eyes on the laptop screen, and off the books and mementos that call out to me.<\/p>\n

Same thing when I’m up in Christina’s old bedroom, dusting the furniture or stitching something up on my sewing machine. Her silly, scary art project masks leer at me across the room. The 7-year-old Christina is here, daring me to be scared.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the room — taking up way too much space, but I can’t bring myself to give it away — is the droll peacock chair she made in school. The roomful of Christina objects chimes, “Hey, I’m Christina and I’m here. Give me a hug.”<\/p>\n

I Miss My Grown-Up Children<\/strong><\/h5>\n

So, mostly I don’t think too long at any given time about my kids. I’d have to let myself feel how sad I am without them. That would be too much to let in. And there’s no fixing it.<\/p>\n

Better to see if Jon would like to help me move the dining room table a foot or two toward the kitchen. The right placement of the table eludes us. Or, I could go online and hunt down patio chairs.<\/p>\n

Jon and I video chat with the kids pretty often. There are telephone calls, emails and posts on social media.\u00a0I tell myself, I’ve got it good. Everybody’s healthy. Everybody has jobs. Marriages are holding up OK. There’s no need to grieve<\/p>\n

But I do.<\/p>\n

Long before my kids came along, there was this story about being young and single in New York City: “Unmarried and Pregnant in Mid-Century America.”<\/a>\u00a0 More about my grown-up kids at “Geographic Mobility in America — Watching My Grown-Up Kids Disappear.”<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 Also, “The Weekend I Talked — And the Kids Listened.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"I-miss-my-grown-up-children<\/a>
Christina concocted this peacock chair in middle school. It takes up way too much space in our house, but I find it charming.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"I-miss-my-grown-up-children<\/a>
I miss my grown-up children. Here they are, at Christina’s wedding. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"I-miss-my-grown-up-children\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I last put my arms around Peter in January. He was here for his birthday, I haven’t seen him — or his sister — since. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,41],"tags":[1621,146,2372,34,54,1527,56],"class_list":["post-32102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-adult-children","tag-christina","tag-coronavirus-shut-down","tag-dont-miss","tag-grown-up-kids","tag-parenting-adult-children","tag-peter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}