Giving birth is the start of the great leaving.
For a time and space you are completely connected to another life, theirs completely dependent on yours, even sharing one blood supply, truly two as one, until it is time for them to leave you. It is with tremendous pain and great labor that the two are separated and into this world another enters. Small and helpless they continue to look to you for their survival, but they grow, begin to take control of their own, teetering little steps towards your outstretched arms, their eyes locked on yours, yours encouraging, cheering them on until they stumble safely against your chest laughing with accomplishment, safe in your protective arms.
Too soon, steady legs keep pace with your own as they step across the threshold of their very first classroom, their small hand clinging tightly to yours, until you place that precious hand into the hand of another, uncertain eyes looking back at yours, pleading with you not to leave them behind. The pain of that first leaving returns and fills your heart as you walk away trusting another to leave behind their own imprint on this life now so dear to yours.
Somewhere along the way of this great departure, their eyes turn and begin to look outward, away from you, towards all the possibilities lying beyond the small, safe world created for their well being, and they step towards all the possibilities, stopping at first to glance back for reassurance and advice until one day they turn to find oceans and continents separating them from you and it seems the great departure is complete.
But, whispers from home drift in and out of their hearts, and one day you both realize home isn't walls and a roof, home are the people who share your memories. Home is the heartbeat you knew before you knew anything else. Home are the ones you love.
This week my home is coming home and for a eight days I will breath them in, I will wake early to watch them sleep and stay up late to hear their thoughts, their plans, their hurts, their successes, and then, once again, with pride and great pain I will watch them go, but I will know they take home back home with them in their memories and in their hearts, and they will leave a bit of home behind to keep me company.
