ElderChicks

When I was 42, I realized that I had devoted the first half of my life to making attachments and the rest would be spent making separations. A bleak, if over-simplified observation, but mostly true nonetheless. My husband, three children, and I had moved across the country, tearing ourselves for the first time from family, friends, and the city of our birth. The wound was jagged and took a long time to heal. Especially for me. Our children were in 7^th, 11^th, and 12^th grades respectively and it was a harsh break.

When your children bleed, you hemorrhage.

At first I thought, “How could I not have known how hard this would be?” At second I thought, “I can’t let this ruin the family. We’ve got to make it work.”

There was no email, Facebook, texting, tweeting, or Skype, and flying across country was still kind of a big deal. Even long distance calling required some serious thought. So I felt really isolated out there in Berkeley where I didn’t know the ropes: how to be a parent during the wild counter-culture seventies, living in the heart of hippie-land. Those were the minuses.

Here are the pluses. My husband kept telling me that our kids are good, solid kids with strong values. They’ll find their way. We had been all over the world with our children; their comfort zones were very broad.

Oh! And then we moved to Milwaukee. By then, though, the kids were in college.

Fast forward to now. In the interim, our children gained strength, learned to view the world from a wide perspective, found friends among disparate people, settled in England, Boston, and California (and I in Philadelphia and Sarasota), so our family spans 6000 miles. Yet we are very much in touch. This includes the seven now adult grandchildren who are very good friends. This past October seven grandchildren plus one “honorary” grandchild surprised me on my 80^th birthday by gathering with the rest of the family (except for one) in Boston and Maine. The grandchildren arrived from London, Hamburg, Glasgow, New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Oregon. Talk about mobile lives!

How did these families that started out 6000 miles apart stay together? It took work. Frequent visits were a priority. We motor tripped with the grandchildren. My children weren’t afraid to put their children on planes when they were quite small so we could spend lots of time together and really get to know each other. We also added email, Skype, and other technology as it came along, which surely makes keeping in touch much easier.

We also held yearly family reunions –at the Jersey shore when the grandchildren were little, and later in Northern California, Lake Tahoe, Great Barrington, Maine, South Africa, Italy. Don’t think I spent these vacations cooking and cleaning for all these people! Two of the six adult children took turns cooking, shopping, and cleanup on an assigned day and were free on the other days. Pairs took turns minding the children all day, leaving everyone else free from responsibility on the days they weren’t in charge. The pair-in-charge often planned a project: making kites, tie-dying tee shirts, scavenger hunts. Of course we’re all adults now and we don’t put schedules on the fridge anymore. But we still cherish the time we spend together.

So about these separations during the last half of my life. 6000 miles of separation from my children is not as painful as it used to be or as I anticipated it would be. I have been very surprised at how close I can remain to them even though the distance in miles is great. I have learned that geography is not destiny when it comes to those you love. The death of my husband, on the other hand, was as painful as I knew it would be. This is a bleak separation that time makes more palatable but the hole in the heart remains.

Is my life better or worse since I am now living squarely in a mobile family? I like that my children and grandchildren are people who are willing to look in the far corners of the world for their places and that they’re comfortable in many settings. I’m glad they didn’t feel constrained or obligated to stay close to home (as I did).  As for me, I have continued to live a life of my own that greatly satisfies, and I treasure my independence.  All things considered, I like the choices we, the family, have made.