Phoebe Kate

Today I packed my middle child, 23-year-old son JK, off for three weeks in Vietnam.  He just graduated magna cum laude last week from a private college in NC with a major in Politics and a minor in Philosophy.  During his four years there, he’s taken full advantage of their impressive study-abroad program. 

This Southeast Asian trip is special, however.  It is, ostensibly, the last trip he’ll ever make with the school, his friends and his teachers.  And this trip is one he engineered.  One of his favorite professors assigned him the responsibility to recruit students for the excursion as well as to organize, plan and execute most of the arrangements. It took the better part of his senior year to accomplish this formidable task — longer than it took for him to write his honors-awarded thesis.  Sixteen students plus several faculty members are going to Vietnam and it’s going to be a memorable experience. 

As I said goodbye to my son today, I couldn’t help but remember his very first trip abroad in freshman year to India.  That trip was special to me.  Since then, I’ve said many a goodbye to this intrepid traveler of mine and you better believe none of them are easy but that first one, four years ago, was the worst. 

I’d had months to steel myself for the departure.  I told myself I wouldn’t get emotional at the airport.  I wouldn’t cry.  I’d be happy for him going someplace I wished I could — hey, what old hippie doesn’t want to visit India?  I promised myself I’d be The Quintessential Cool Mom.  My three kids have always told me I’m way cooler than any of their friends’ mothers.  Sheesh, I had no intention of blowing my rep and street cred at this late date.

Ha.  In my dreams.

After my son and I hugged and said our I Love You’s and I watched as he disappeared through the maze of security checkpoints carrying an enormous backpack that dwarfed his 6′1 frame, I began to sniffle and tear up.  My mascara started to ooze.  And then I started to cry.  All by myself in the middle of a busy major airport.  At 10:30 on a weekday morning with businesspersons giving me dirty looks.

An attractive lady about my age who was standing near me came over and asked, “Are you all right?  Was that your son you said goodbye to?  Where’s he going?”

“No,” I sputtered.  ”I’m sorry.  I’m afraid I’m not all right.  And my son is going to India.  He’s 19 and he’s never been out of this country before.”  And then, despite my best efforts, I started to sob.

That dear lady immediately hugged me and said comforting things to me.  I don’t remember exactly what, but it helped.  Something along the lines of my son looked very mature and competent and it was obvious I’d raised him to be a fine and able young man.  That this was a wonderful opportunity for him.  That being a mother was hard.  Very hard.  That saying goodbye can tear your heart out, even if the goodbye is only for awhile.

I stopped sobbing and apologized for making an idiot out of myself.  She told me her children return yearly to visit family and friends in South America and that she cries every time she sends them off, even though they’ll be back in a few weeks or months.  “In time, you get used to it,” she told me.  “But it doesn’t get any easier or hurt any less.”

I remembered that compassionate and wise lady today.  And I remembered a heroine of mine in Southern literature.  Blanche DuBois said in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.”

And sometimes, so have I. 

–phoebe kate