On launching and longing

And my 4 AM Christmas-induced existential mother-crisis

I woke up at 4 AM thinking about Christmas morning.

That may be the most relatable thing a midlife woman could possibly write on December 20. This season, for all its joy and comfort, also brings with it no small number of sleep-crushing details.

But this morning I wasn’t thinking about the relative number of gifts per family member or wondering why on earth I put different razor brands in everyone’s stockings last year — now, of course, necessitating that I take inventory so that I can put the correct blades in the corresponding stocking this year. (Fear not, I dealt with that dilemma at 4:30 AM on December 19!)

No, this morning my thoughts were less practical and more profound, never slowing down long enough to put into words. They were swelling, shape-shifting things that felt sometimes like joy and sometimes like pride and sometimes like panic.

Things are changing fast for my family. Sure, I’ve had adult children for eight years, but between the divorce, Covid, and some personal coming-of-age struggles, their collective exodus from my orbit has been slow and stuttered.

They’ve left, sure. But they’ve kept on coming back.

A big part of that coming-back, I know, has been one another. I’m all right, but also humble enough to know I’m not that big of a draw. Their sibling bonds and family identity have mostly been what keep them all hovering around the nest I’ve built.

Now, it’s as though they are collectively looking outward and ready to leap - all at the same time.

My oldest son Jacob is moving a few hours away in January to attend college. My second-oldest, Isaac, has been on the road for a few months, working for my brother’s company, and it sounds like middle son William, will be joining him in the new year. Owen, my high school senior, will be heading off to college in the fall.

Clara, who still has three years of school left after this one, isn’t happy about this turn of events. But I think it’ll be good for her to have some space and learn to carve out her own identity separate from “little sister”. She’ll be doing her own leaping and launching in the next several years, I know, even if she isn’t leaving home yet.

And then there’s me, settling into a new marriage and home, happy for the space to focus a little more tightly inward for a while, while also wondering: whaaa happened?

This brings me to Christmas, the subject that woke me early this morning.

I’ve somehow managed to gather all my kids under my roof on Christmas Day, every single year since the year (1999) Isaac was born and my now-ex and I put traveling on Christmas behind us in favor of a home-based holiday.

In twenty-four years we’ve barely even strayed from our usual routine of stockings-gifts-brunch-lounging, even after the divorce. It’s been pretty easy, with most of them hovering close to home.

Stockings after being filled, 2013

And while I’ve known all along that it couldn’t stay that way forever, the day it all changes suddenly feels a lot closer than it did last year or the year before.

I’m so excited for my kids. Proud of every single one of them, for the way they’ve grown and changed, together and individually. 2024 looks like leaps and bounds, like a catapult for them all. Yay, launching.

And I’m excited for myself, too. There is a life for me on the other side of managing school calendars and dentist appointments that I’m just beginning to see glimmers of.

Chiseling away at the details I no longer need to manage and the load I no longer can carry will not be easy work, but imagine just what sort of new possibilities all that shedding will reveal?

Christmas 2020

But Christmas?

Truthfully, though I know I’ll need to eventually, I’m resisting giving up our usual Christmas routine.

So for the next few days I’ll be doing what I’ve done for decades in the days leading up to Christmas. I’ll be wrapping gifts, setting out snack bowls, stuffing stockings.

They’ll descend on the house this weekend and drape their long bodies all over the furniture, talking over and under and around each other. Sometimes I’ll have to play along like I understand their jokes; other times I’ll laugh, genuinely, until I cry.

I’ll patiently, and sometimes not-so-patiently, inquire as to the ownership of the balled socks on the floor, the candy wrappers on the end tables.

I’ll watch them all together, all one another’s favorite people, and realize that this is the reason I did it, any of it, the hard stuff especially.

At some point, I’ll be ready for it to be over. Yet I’ll really never be ready for it to be over. That’s motherhood in a nutshell, I suppose, and maybe Christmas is just the densest, most concentrated version of the nutshell’s contents.

All our longing for forever-togetherness, packed into a few days. All our hopes for permanence distilled into fragile, temporary moments we can’t keep or relive.

All of it, reflected back at us in photos of our families gathered around a tree, already different people by the time the shutter snaps.

p.s.: I couldn’t have described the feeling of cosmic right-ness when all of one’s children are home any better than

Catherine Newman

did here: “The twinned joy and relief I feel when the kids are home in our house in their beds? When I do my nightly psychic Mama check-in and they’re just right here with me? When I see their toothbrush by the sink or their towel hanging on the floor? When I fall asleep to the sound of them crying laughing over each other’s favorite TikToks? It is happiness at the level of my actual cells.”

p.p.s: I’ve gotten such a great response to the super-slow book club I’m launching Monday. If you’re a new subscriber who’s here for the club, I’m so glad you’re here! I’m busily planning away - when not contemplating razors and existential mother crises, of course.