From tears. To smiles. To oh crap. To cardiac arrest. To laughs. To epiphanies. Holy cow what a day!

Dear friends,

Yesterday was one wild ride.

It started with tears at home because, you know, I got all choked up over my own post even as I was posting it. (Yes, I’m a goofball.)

But then things started looking up as I read your very kind and insightful and empathetic comments, both on this space and on my Facebook page. (I can’t thank all of you enough for sharing your stories and bolstering my spirits.)

Then on my lunch hour I finally got around to booking our trip to NYC — er, Hoboken — for Kate’s graduation gift. I had been procrastinating because — while I’ve been to NYC four times in my life, I don’t know it all that well — and I was fearful of making dreadful, regrettable mistakes. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to pay $500 a night for a hotel room, so I eventually had to just pick one and go with it.

So I chose a little “boutique” hotel on the Upper West Side. (I don’t know why, maybe because it was close to the subway, and I stayed in Times Square once and didn’t find it all that appealing, and I didn’t think I wanted to be downtown, so I just, you know, went with the one with the pretty pictures and the good price.) And after I picked the hotel and prepaid for it, I realized it’s so “charming” and so “historic” it doesn’t have an elevator. And some of the reviews said it sometimes doesn’t have hot water, either. So lord only knows what I’ve gotten us into in the name of frugality.

And then I checked the price of Broadway tickets and had a heart attack. I really want to see Book of Mormon but I really don’t want to pay $600 for two tickets, so I’m trying to decide whether it makes sense to just stand in the Times Square discount ticket line and take our chances when we get there. (Thoughts, anyone?)

Then I sketched out our itinerary for all five days and couldn’t decide if Little Italy or Chinatown was the better bet. MOMA or Met? NBC Studio Tour or TV and Movie Sites Tour? Fifth Avenue or Garment District or SoHo for shopping?

Then I found this — a handy little map of all the shopping in Soho and it pretty much sealed the deal.

Then I got dizzy trying to decide if we could tour Ground Zero and Liberty/Ellis Island in one day, so I abandoned trip planning until I can get my wits about me.

Then I came home, where my entire family dog-piled into the kitchen because we were all starving. And, for once, I made supper while my kids made lists of the friends they plan to invite to our Memorial Day float trip. And Parker — who’s not my most decisive child — was really having trouble narrowing down his extensive list of social contacts to fit into an 8-man raft — causing me to lose patience.

And Kate finally stepped in and said “Parker! Have tryouts and make cuts!”

Which made every last one of us laugh out loud, even Parker. And in that moment — that moment where we were all together and laughing and eating and having fun — I remembered what so many of you said to me about savoring every moment.

And I did.

I surely did.

With gratitude {for the clarity to put down my hanky and embrace your wise words},

Joan, who knows even if the hotel she picked yesterday is a flea-bag, it still won’t be her biggest travel blunder ever, because her friends still tease her about the time she purchased Royals vs. Yankees tickets for their girls weekend in Kansas City only to get to Kauffman Stadium and realize the game was at Yankee Stadium

Too many words on my mental state at this exact moment.

Dear friends,

I don’t have the right words to describe how I’ve been feeling lately, so I’ll just take a ham-handed stab at it.

Teary. Jittery. Frustrated. Angry. Distraught. Restless. Blue. Pensive. To the tenth power.

I told Mr. Mom yesterday that I alternate between wanting to burst into tears and stab somebody in the face. (Actually, I think if I could stab somebody THEN have a good cry, I might feel a whole lot better.)

At any other point in my life, I might have called this feeling hormonal. (Sorry male readers.) But I’m pretty sure I’m not hormonal.

I’m pretty sure I’m freaking out. I’m pretty sure I’m flipping my lid because the beautiful young woman in the photo above is moving out.  I’m pretty sure I’m melting down because my mother card is being punched for the last time and I don’t get a new one.

I’ve been a working mother for all of my children’s lives. My own mother raised my children until Mr. Mom took over a few years ago. I have always known my days as a pinch-hitter were numbered. But I looked up not long ago and realized my number had dropped from triple digits to double digits. That’s right, Kate moves away in 79 days.

Seventy-nine days and I’m no longer the mother of a daughter who lives under my roof. Seventy-nine days and anything I wanted to be as a mother, do as a mother, is over. Seventy-nine days and my fate is sealed on what Kate thinks and feels and remembers about her time under my wing. I had my swing at the ball and now I have to go sit in the dugout. Forever.

The thing is — when you are a working mother, you can’t think about your expiration date. You do, of course, but you don’t contemplate it seriously because — damn — you’re just trying to get through the days, you know, with some sliver of your sanity intact. Maybe stay-at-home mothers feel this way, too. I would never know. And maybe their guilt and regret is every bit as intense as those of us who go to the office everyday and work too many nights and weekends and take too many business trips and miss too many school plays and sporting matches.

Maybe the lot of every soul born a woman and who later gives birth is to feel sorrow and guilt and regret and to second-guess every thing she ever did, including the pink lipstick that she insisted upon and that infuriated her daughter on dance recital day, as well as the moment she lost her senses and threw the remote control at the back of her daughter’s head and mercifully missed because she can’t hit a target to save her life. Maybe the lot of every mother is to live out her days convinced all she did was fritter it away and screw it up and believe there is surely a special hell for mothers. Especially neurotic, introspective mothers.

All I know is this mother misses every moment she didn’t get to have with her daughter even though she knows made a bargain with her partner and her end of the bargain included earning a living and now feeling this way is selfish and indulgent, like she wanted it all and knew she couldn’t have it all but is still p-o’d about it.

Hey, I didn’t say I was being rational.

And since I’m not being rational, please don’t tell me about how great it will be to transition to the next stage of motherhood. I cannot hear those words right now. I’m still having a tantrum over this stage coming to an end.

But if you want to tell me I’m normal, not psychotic, that would be appreciated. If you want to tell me this feeling, much like grieving, will diminish with time, then that will be appreciated, too. If you want to commiserate and tell me this transition in a mother’s life sucks big-time — whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a working mom — then I’ll give you an “Amen, sister.” If you want to hold my hand and cry with me, then come over soon, please, or at least before I get my ugly cry-face on.

Because let’s not compound the tragedy, okay?

With gratitude {for . . . I’m searching . . . I’m searching . . .},

Joan, who feels a little like Anne of the Thousand Days, only she had 7,000 and it’s still not nearly enough

Enrolling we will go.

Dear friends,

I got home Sunday evening from a week-long work marathon that flat wore me out. I didn’t even unpack, as I turned around Monday afternoon for a 30-hour road trip to enroll Kate in college.

At least I’m getting two trips out of one packing hassle.  You gotta look on the bright side.

Meanwhile, Kate got dinner on the road at her favorite chain — a place nowhere near the town we live in now and highly reminiscent of our former life in Okie-land.

According to Kate's Tweet, "You have issues if you order anything but tea at McAllister's."

Better yet, we discovered last night that Kate’s new college town boasts her favorite ice cream and burger spot (known as Braum’s, for my homeland readers).  While I’m starting to freak out about my oldest child’s impending departure (90 days is impending in my book, folks), she’s already licking her lips for tastes of home.

You know, it just occurred to me that if we went to visit her (as opposed to her coming back to see us), our family could stop at all of our favorite Oklahoma haunts and eat our way through a lifetime of happy culinary memories.

I just love it when karma works this way.

With gratitude {for Oklahoma barbeque, Tex-Mex, chicken fried steak, hot hamburgers, sweet tea and so many other culinary favorites},

Joan, who refrained from spoiling her “clean eating” record of late on this trip home but knows similar restraint will be impossible in August as she says goodbye to her little birdie

Bam!

Dear friends,

My baby, my first baby, will turn 19 in two days. I don’t know how it happened. I went to bed and she was six, and I woke up and she was 19. Life is funny that way.

Thirteen years ago when she turned six, I was so discombobulated by it I wrote a story. She had been my baby right through five, then bam! Six was entirely different. My baby was gone, replaced by a young girl.

This week as Kate passes another milestone that feels like a bigger bam to her mother, I thought I’d remind myself I survived the last one. Not without a few tears, but I survived.

With gratitude {for the angel who watches over mothers and reminds us we can take the next step},

Joan, whose heart is bursting with love and pride beyond what she ever imagined possible

Six is Wondrous New

A six-year-old girl is a most precious thing. A contradiction, a charm, a sprightly smile of blush and pride.

Even at five, she is a baby, my baby, hand and heart grasped in mine, and not yet initiated into the world of team sports, sleepovers, all-day school.

But at six, she is all about risk and motion, and fields undared, a tumblebug of queries to be posed full speed.

And six is wondrous new.

New challenges, new friends, new dreams, new notions unfold before her, a splendid banquet of awe and fear to be carefully tasted, some savored, some spat. And I in the shadows, waiting to offer encouragement that is rarely required or even asked, ponder her journey and my place in it.

I am not ready to release my grasp, my being, my daughter to the life that is becoming hers. Hers, not mine, in a separate form I can shape but cannot mold.

How do I capture the essence that is her, that is six, that is all my dream can ever be, of a child that is each day new, when I want to hold the moments in my hands forever? Not in my heart, not in my mind, but in my white-knuckled hands where her sum and substance never slip or fade.

And how do I tell her that she is beautiful, and amazing, and strong, and smart without sounding like her mother?  Mother, she might say, making her disclaimer in a tone I perfected.

Independence.  It’s a good thing, right? She runs ahead, skips pages, makes no quarrel with uncertainty, and feels not the qualms I harbor on her behalf.  She stands tall and straight, offering a smile at times most needed, unaware of evil or life’s disappointments more severe than a lost opportunity for ice cream. Her freckles sparkle in the afternoon sun and her toes reach for the sky, outstretched on a flying swing that traces a menacing arc.

She is my poetry, and I struggle to remember full verse. Yet, still I cry at its reading, and it moves me to want another just like her, and another and another and another, as shelter from the dangers of her journey.

But when I go to her at night and reach to share a bedtime hug, she makes me who I am. We lay still, our hearts beating to a matched pace, and she is six forever.

And one time, she holds longer than I, and offers a whispered rhyme as redress for growing up.

“I don’t want to let go because I love you so.”

Joisey girls.

Dear friends,

Not long ago I was kvetching to a friend about how much I’ll miss Kate when she moves away to college, about how time is slipping away, about . . . oh, you know — that thing that mothers do.

And my wise friend, who has been the source of many good ideas and advice over the years, suggested I needed to plan a girls’ trip with Kate — a week’s getaway after she graduates from high school, just the two us, as a kind of rite of passage/celebration/cementing of the mother-daughter bond experience.

I was all over the idea and mentioned it to Kate immediately. I told her we would go anywhere she wanted to go (within reason of course, which my girl is nothing if not reasonable) and to think about it.

A couple of nights ago I followed up with her.

Joan: Have you been thinking about where we might go for our girls’ trip?

Kate: Anywhere is fine, Mom. Wherever you’d like to go, I’m sure I’d enjoy it.

Joan: No, no, no. I want you to pick. It’s your trip.

Kate: Well, I was talking to a friend and I was thinking how fun it would be to go to Hoboken.

<insert screeching tire sound>

Turns out, guess who is in Hoboken?

Photo credit: hddavila2007

Our favorite baker ever, Buddy of Cake Boss!

Kate started her confectionary odyssey before I did. In fact, she’s the one who inspired me to take up baking. Long before I was spending my Sundays making multi-layer, filled cakes from scratch, Kate was creating and selling these little delights:

So Hoboken it is! And while we’re in the neighborhood, I suggested we ought to drop in on the Big Apple. Because there’s just a few things we might enjoy over there, like hanging around outside 30 Rock and stalking Tina Fey.

I’m so excited, I’m tingly! I’ve been to NYC three previous times, in 1976, 1987 and 1999, but Kate has never traveled there. The last time I was in Manhattan, I went to the top of the World Trade Center for the first time. Kate and I both want to see Ground Zero.

If you’ve been to NYC more recently than 1999, would you do a girl a favor and drop me some suggestions? Where should we stay? Where must we eat? There’s so much to choose from, I need a carefully edited itinerary and would welcome your input.

With gratitude {for the anticipation and excitement of planning a big trip},

Joan, who in her secret dreams believes she could have been a real-life Carrie Bradshaw, pink tutu and all (except for the Mr. Big part because she is clearly more into the Mr. Moms than the Mr. Bigs)

Whip it. Whip it good.

Dear Friends,

Source: AllMovie.com

At age 17, when pressed for a pithy “philosophy” to include with my senior portrait in our high school yearbook, I cribbed a line from Lennon & McCartney: I get by with a little help from my friends.

It was true 30+ years ago and it’s still true today.

I couldn’t be more grateful for the words of wit, wisdom and encouragement left by readers on yesterday’s post.  Let’s just say I was down in the dumps Monday night when I wrote the post. Then Tuesday . . . well, it was a doozy. It was one of those days that knocks you for a loop at work then smacks you upside the head when you get home.

But last night when I finally sat down after 8:00 pm to read your comments and compose this post, I smiled, I laughed, I nodded my head in agreement, and I said a silent thank-you for everyone who wrote to encourage me.

I was most tickled by Doug F’s clever analogy:

Life is roller derby. We’re the blockers, and our kids are the jammers. The jammers score the points. Our job is to whip them forward. This requires them to break away from the pack, at which point our main job is to be happy, pump our fists in the air and maybe gratuitously hip check somebody. Also: After the match, everyone gets beer, so it’s all good in the end.

I’ve known Doug a long time in my real life and he’s always been one of the most creatively talented people in my universe. At the risk of sounding gender-biased, it’s so like a man to embrace his “role” in the game with gusto. (Remember Mr. Mom’s advice about roles in this post?) But underneath that male detachment and clever wit lies a real nugget of wisdom: my job is to help Kate break from the pack by whipping her forward — then cheering her on. Doug, your words were so what I needed to hear and I thank you for putting them in terms that were crystal clear (as well as downright funny). You know what they say: a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Dee and Debbie and Cyrina (who commented on my Facebook page) are from my hometown, women a little older than me whom I admire so much. Hearing their personal stories and knowing “they made it through and so will I” was a much-needed dose of comfort and support from the town and the people I love most.

TexasDeb is a friend who consistently writes more insightful comments than I do posts. And knowing she has also survived the transition, with specific strategies to share, helps me focus on what I can do moving forward rather than wallowing in what I fear I will miss.

Dana is a new reader who encouraged me just by letting me know she’s about to walk my path and she’s fearful, too. Sometimes mothers just need to know they aren’t alone.

With gratitude {for you and the many friends who’ve helped me get by for, lo, these 49 years},

Joan, who would have worn a helmet and pads had she known Tuesday would be so brutal

The downhill side.

Dear Friends,

A million years ago (actually 6,902 days, but who’s counting?) I birthed my first child. In the seconds after my Sweet Baby Kate first emerged into this world and I glimpsed her already-familiar beauty, I felt as if the whole world stretched before me like some endless yellow-brick road to a promised land called motherhood. When my child was born flawless and healthy, I was so euphoric I imagined, for one sublimely-cocooned moment, that this promised land was eternal and free of heartache, or fear, or worry. I felt like Mother Earth, solid and ageless and in perfect orbit in our universe.

And that lasted about a minute, until somebody prodded or poked my perfect baby sufficient to elicit a wail and my bubble was burst by a tsunami of abject fear. It’s pretty much been downhill from there, because every mother I know thinks she simply cannot bear another fever; another trip to the urgent care; another sleepless night worrying over The Teacher Who Doesn’t Understand; another snub from the snotty Girl Who Makes Her Friend-Candidates Try Out and, sorry, Kate, you didn’t make it; another lost tennis tournament; another boyfriend; another broken heart; another anything, because for Pete’s Sake, Can’t I Be Done Mothering Now?

And then one day recently I woke up and realized — all this daily bucking up I’ve been doing — holy crap, it’s almost over! I am being relieved of my duty because this fair-haired baby of mine with the delicate skin and chubby cheeks and sweet disposition has grown up. And, though I have pretended for months it can’t possibly be true, just last week two college acceptance letters came in the mail, pretty much proving she’s moving out soon.

And what will I be if I am not the Woman Who Mothers This Child? Don’t tell me I’ll be mothering her all the same (because those college kids need lots of loving support and encouragement, you know). Tell me how mothers survive children who move away because in all these years of bucking up, in all the books I’ve read about mothering, nobody told me how to endure The Day When She No Longer Resides With Me.

I’ve got less than 200 days to figure out how to be a Mother Who Lives Apart from Her Child. I welcome your advice. Well, let me be more direct: I desperately need your advice and encouragement and Mr. Mom has flat run out of words to offer the Woman Who Is Wholly Unprepared to be the Mother of a Grown Child.

With gratitude {for 7,000 days of cohabitation with my Sweet Baby Kate, even though it clearly wasn’t enough training for the likes of me},

Joan, who in those 7,000 days took hundreds of snapshots like this one, because the imperfect moments are the ones you really savor