Shhhhh....

He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.”
― Emily Giffin, Love the One You're With

“It’s ok not to be ok.” —from Jessie J, “Who You Are”

The ride back from my daughter Olivia’s college orientation was quiet. This is notable because conversation is one of our best events. While neither of us ever forgets who’s in charge, we’re pretty good friends. In fact, on the way to LIU Post from our home in Massachusetts three days before, we talked for the first two hours of the trip.

Did I say “we”? I did most of the talking, as I had a captive audience, and I hadn’t seen her much lately. She is 18, after all, the age at which one should be anywhere but home as often as possible.

On Sunday morning, with a three-hour trip ahead of us the quiet made me feel jittery, odd. It’s uncomfortable for me to be sitting next to her in a silence this loud. It’s a feeling analogous to the gloomy dark curtain that swoops across the window just before a storm, entering my house like a ghost, when just moments before the sun was warming the sill.

  At first I thought she was annoyed because I refused to drive back as soon as orientation was finished the prior evening. Instead, we had driven to my parents’ house less than an hour away to avoid having to do part of the trip home in the dark. I don’t like driving in the dark which, in Olivia’s opinion means I’ve lost my sense of adventure. I prefer to think of it as self-preservation. I happen to like getting to where I’m going alive and in one piece.

At issue was her need to hurry back because she’d already been away from her friends for three nights in a row. It was a ridiculous reason to be sore at me, from where I was sitting anyway, considering that all summer she’d been spending five out of seven nights not sleeping in her own bed. She shows up at home to shower, grab a snack, catch up on Facebook and request a few bucks for gas.

Finally, the reveal: “I’m the only one of my friends who is going to school so far away”, she said. “ I won’t be able to come home that much. I’ll  hardly ever see them.” My cranky traveling companion was not angry with me. At least,not directly.  In a matter of weeks, everything was going to change. Uncertainty is Change’s companion, and there is no crystal ball to consult. I remember leaving home and being scared too, wondering how it would all pan out.

I don’t know how to allay this fear, this newest wrinkle in her life. Change has some very sharp edges, and I’m unsure whether or not it’s within my power to soften them.  There are just some things you have to discover for yourself. Everyone knows change isn’t something you can run from, thinking you can outpace it if you’re clever enough. You can’t hide under the covers, and peek out at the world hoping for a static landscape despite the change of seasons.

Maybe I’ll assure her that if her friends are true friends, they will be here when she returns. If they’re anything like my best friend from high school (I had just the one, but she was worth ten), they can pick up where they left off; time does not diminish the connections the heart has made.

Maybe I’ll impress upon her the idea of change as being the thing you should strive for! If nothing ever changed, nothing would grow or learn or stand taller or age gracefully. I want to tell her that not only will her faithful friends still love her, but she’ll be adding new ones.  She’ll fall in love (more than once), make her own decisions, and figure out what’s around the corner. She probably won’t listen but maybe I’ll remind her that everyone and everything changes, daily, hourly, minute-by-minute, and you just have to see the beauty in that, in the amazing, albeit occasionally sad, parts of being alive.

Maybe I’ll just tell her it will all be ok. And when she’s not okay, to sit with it for awhile until the feeling passes. Don’t worry so much. Yes, that’s it.

I can try to get used to the quiet of a car ride if it’s required, and from the perspective of a mother, appreciate it for the peace it can bring . It’s inside the quiet that we listen best, and learn something we didn’t know before. The future will teach Olivia what she's supposed to know. But this is my little instruction for all my children: In the hush of the space in which we find ourselves is the persistence of memory, and what came before exists through each shift of time—friendships, love, losses and gains, and the certainty that what we once had, we will have again.