Missing

by Rod Smith

We were snowed in. 

Somewhat caught up with the housekeeping, laundry washed, dried, folded; Nate in his room downstairs, Thulani at work, it overcame me. 

I began to miss my sons even though both were very reachable. 

One so near I could hear his television.

I was missing an era. 

I was missing the times they were both on top of me, getting in my way. I was missing the way they’d run all over the house chasing each other, doing cart-wheels then landing on the sofa. Much to my faked chagrin they’d skateboard from the kitchen to the living room and back again. I was missing their rapid shift from fast friends to seeming enemies following the most minor of interpersonal hiccups. I recalled with fondness how immediately they’d make up as soon as I tried to play peacemaker. 

The baby years, the toddler years, the so-called tweens.  

I was missing the us we were, and, like emotional jet-lag taking its toll, it hit me all at once.

There is no doubt that I love them exactly as they are and I want them to be exactly where they are and doing what they are doing. 

Deep inside me, snow falling all round, I was longing for what we were, what was, what is gone.

32nd Street

3 Comments to “Missing”

  1. Unknown's avatar

    I’m so sorry about you missing the ‘what was’ Rod… praying for special Grace and Comfort for you my friend 🥰

  2. Unknown's avatar

    Rod, we are in that spot right now. Wanting them exactly where they are but missing how it was. Thank you for this eloquent perspective.
    JM

  3. Unknown's avatar

    After reading your column on how much you long for your boys now they’ve grown up and moved away I thought I’d share this beautiful poem by Cecil Day-Lewis.

    Walking Away, by Cecil Day-Lewis

    It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day
    A sunny day with leaves just turning,
    The touch-lines new-ruled — since I watched you play
    Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
    Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
    Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
    You walking away from me towards the school
    With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free Into a wilderness, the gait of one
    Who finds no path where the path should be.
    That hesitant figure, eddying away
    Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
    Has something I never quite grasp to convey
    About nature’s give-and-take — the small, the scorching
    Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
    I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
    Saying what God alone could perfectly show — How selfhood begins with a walking away,
    And love is proved in the letting go.

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