Flying Out

      My youngest son, who's been here on the side of our Italian hill with me for five days, is leaving tonight -- going back to London for a night with his dad, and then back to Charleston, his college town, for his senior year.

      It's been so special to have him. It just hit me last night that we've never spent so much time alone together. We're almost always together as a family, the four of us.

      I know other families divide the kids up occasionally so they can spend individual time with their mothers, or their fathers, but we've never done that except for the odd movie or dinner. 

      Maybe we should have, because it does make for an unique bonding time. I can't speak for my husband, but I'm just guessing the five days our son spent with him in London before he came here were special for him too. 

      Anyway, that's it for awhile. I probably won't see him for about four months, until his Christmas break.

      I hate that.

      Last night, at dinner by the lake, we were talking about all his high school buddies and how much time they had been home this year too. It seems the only time I've really missed with him, compared to them, was Easter, when my son said he wouldn't have come home anyway (if he had had a home to come to) because they didn't get any time off school -- and we lived several hours from Charleston.

      That made me feel better. I hadn't really missed out on anything. But that's going to change now.

      Everyone will go home for Thanksgiving in November, my favorite American holiday.  And flying them to London for Thanksgiving is just not feasible financially, so close to Christmas break.

      I didn't want to broach Thanksgiving last night. It just makes me feel sad. He'll have plenty of invitations from his friends, of course, so he won't be alone, but still. We will be. Will we be every year from now on? 

      While we were talking about his friends, and his looming graduation next May, my son said, you know, most of them are going home, for awhile anyway, after they graduate. Until they find jobs.  

      We've spent a lot of time discussing what he's going to do after he graduates -- and coming to London to work is one of his options. Just one of many that he's tossing around.

      I've told him there's no pressure for him to do that -- and he knows that. It would be good for him in a lot of ways, building on what he studied at college, but it's something he needs to decide for himself, of course. 

       My face fell, I was jealous, it was obvious, when he told me a lot of his friends would be moving back home, even if that's not really what they want to do, or what he would want to do, he told me.

       I have no right to feel that, though, something he quickly pointed out.

       "You're the ones who moved, Mom," he said.

        My eyes welled.