"Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different was you." Hmmm.

It’s been a week.

That sound you don’t hear is the sound of mothers from coast to coast, sitting amidst the quiet in their homes this evening. They’re walking past doors they slip a chain lock across at the end of the evening, past beds that remain smoothly made in tidy rooms and past towels that hang neatly – for days on end - in the bathroom. They notice the car parked outside, albeit with only half a gallon of gas in the tank. They walk past kitchen cabinets where favorite cereals, snacks and drinks that were on hand just one week ago, are all gone.

They’ve all said a post-Thanksgiving goodbye to sons and daughters who headed back to college following the holiday break. And almost no part of it feels very good.

This is the third year I’ve sent someone back to college after Thanksgiving. In 2008, my oldest son came and went, exhibiting a bit of the “you’re not the boss of me” attitude I’d anticipated from my college freshman but somehow was still not fully prepared to handle. In 2009 and again this year, my second and third sons joined in the fun of arriving home, hovering in and around the family for several days, and then leaping back into what had quickly become their new normal.

So – three rounds of this and you know what? It doesn’t get easier. At least for me it doesn’t.

What became evident to me, this year more than in the past, is that no matter how much you want it to remain safe and familiar, and no matter how hard you try to recreate a moment, you can’t do it. Life continues to evolve and the people in it do, too. Salinger expressed this so much more poetically in ‘Catcher’ when Holden talked about walking through the unchanging exhibits and figures in the Museum of Natural History: “Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. … Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

Well, let me think about this. Our rooms remain the same, with the same picture still leaning against one wall, waiting to be hung properly (it’s been there for eleven months – I’m not joking.) Other photos sit on a table, waiting for the right frames. The rooms remain filled with the papers, books, magazines, notes, flyers, and newspapers. [For years, I’ve believed in the ‘butterfly effect.’ A butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and a piece of paper lands on a flat surface in our home.] But even if all that remains unchanged, I feel like we’re all different, in small almost indefinable ways this year.

For example, despite their protests, I used to “wait up” for the boys, dozing on the sofa until I heard the door open and I could hug them all good night. I don’t know why I thought this made a difference to the outcome of any activity on the planet, or why sofa-sleep somehow indicated I was more attentive than bed-sleep. (It didn’t by the way, although no one could convince me of that at the time.)

That has given way to “waiting up” while lying comfortably in bed, and sleeping lightly until I hear their footsteps on the stairs. I’ve told the boys that no matter the hour, I will hear them arrive home. At night, I have the hearing of an Egyptian slit-eared bat. Last week, I heard one, then a second son enter and exit a bathroom, then heard two bedroom doors close. In my mind: “Two? Only two? “ Someone’s missing… Click. A third door. “Ah, there he is.” And then I snuggled under covers and dozed off.

So what does that make me? Less concerned? Less committed to motherhood? Neither of those things. It just proves my point: the setting remains but the people evolve.

But I guess I’m wondering what Holden may have meant by having “certain things” stay the way they are. I don’t really want to stick anything or anyone in a glass case but the idea of preserving the moments I’ve cherished as the boys grew up is tempting. Then I remind myself that this is real life, not a museum of life. The only person I can think of who preserved the past to help him live in the present was Norman Bates, for God’s sake.

Every stage of their lives has been a fascinating journey of discovery as we all found out - incredibly incrementally I might add – who we were. Who we were when we were fighting, or furious. When we were thrilled with our circumstances and laughing uncontrollably. Or when we were bereft and very nearly inconsolable. And who we were for every single hour in between. Every moment left its own little footprint, and each one was a discovery we wouldn’t have made had we been frozen in one spot.

Here’s the thing. I watch my boys – who are really no longer boys, but young adults – and I think, for the nine millionth time – are you okay? I’m wondering if any of the fourteen thousand decisions I made about anything that was super-critically, God-we'd-better-get-this right important while you were growing up – not one of which I can name right now - meant anything in the long run.

At the same time, let me just say: they’re amazing people. All on their own, they’re each one an amazing young man. It’s been my enormous good fortune and blessing to have them in my life for more than twenty years. And in these last few years, as they wander in and out of our home on their way to the future, I keep thinking about another line from Holden’s visit to the museum: “The birds nearest you were all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in the back were just painted on the wall, but they all looked like they were really flying south…”

So yes; I see them but they’re moving further away, on their way to a new destination.

But it’s all good! I’m good! I’m good with that. And I’m bad with that. And thinking: only about two more weeks until winter break.

Webs...and the breaking thereof.

“On this doorstep I stand, year after year and watch you leaving.

And think:

May you not skin your knees; May you not catch your fingers in car doors;

May your hearts not break; May tide & weather wait for your coming.

And may you grow strong to break the webs of my weaving.”

Several years ago, I referenced this simple and perfect poem by Evangeline Peterson in a column I wrote to mark the passage of time as my boys were growing up. They were about 11, 11 and 12 years old and living through those exploratory years that build the bridge between the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence.

What I didn’t quite recognize at the time – even though the poem references it so beautifully - is that they were in the early stages of stretching their webs, creating the tension and the tugging that would eventually lead to breaking them. In my mind, we had so many more years together. It didn’t feel possible that they were starting to grow stronger – and away from me - already.

Did I really believe in that last line in the poem? Hat tip to Evangeline if she truly did: she’s a braver mother than I. Did I want them to break those webs I had been weaving for more than a decade?

Intellectually, I think I believed it. I knew that realistically, barring no true heartbreak for any of us, they would eventually break their ties to me and to our home and make their way into the world. And if all went very, very well, they would do so with “tide and weather” waiting for their coming. In my mind, I understood that even from babyhood, our children break or at least stretch the webs we weave almost daily.

Emotionally, I didn’t really mean it. I wanted nothing to change and no webs of any kind to be so much as tested, much less broken. It’s not that I yearned for their baby days or the preschool boys who melted my heart daily. I accepted the passing years because I found the boys relentlessly fascinating and stimulating and challenging at every age. I accepted those years for one other main reason: the boys were right there. Right upstairs, or across the table or next to me in the car.

Yes, of course I imagined them grown up someday and contributing to society. I believed they would find their way, even that they might make a couple of wrong turns from time to time, and it was a comforting thought. The bad news, the difficult part for me, was that it was very unlikely that any of the paths they chose to follow would lead directly back to our front door.

But they have walked back in, for a few days at least. It’s the first Thanksgiving holiday where all three of them “came home” from their new lives. And in a very real way, it’s confounding. Growing up, we lived through thousands of comings and goings on a daily basis. And even then, even when separations lasted only hours, not weeks, every single time we reconnected, some part of each one of us had changed. One of us had lived a tremendous day or a crappy day, or had an argument that debilitated us or a stimulating discussion that would be long remembered, or enjoyed a connection made of friendship or love, or a endured a hurtful flash of ignorance or hate. We carried it home with us that day – and whether or not it was evident – it was there. And sitting around the table almost every night, even though we lived together and spent hours and hours around each other daily, it was sometimes difficult to read their faces and hear their tone and pick up the clues that gave away the details of everyone’s day.

So this holiday weekend, I can’t help but look at my boys and think in the most profound way: how have you been? What has changed inside you? I wonder about the thousands and thousands of moments they have lived over the past few months without that physical, daily connection between us. Let me be clear: I don’t expect – nor really want – full disclosure here. I went to college, too, and prefer to leave some decisions I made at that time, and the resulting memories, behind. The activities themselves don’t concern me as much as the remains of those activities. Are they happy? Confused? Despairing? Optimistic? I’m not sure I can get a good sense of that in the next four days.

The truth is, I’m straining to hold onto that web I weaved so carefully and lovingly for the past two decades. It’s showing signs of weakness and it’s not going to last. It can’t. It wasn’t made to endure. It was created to keep everyone connected and safe and secure – for a while.

We’re all way past the web stage anyway. As our webs break – or even stretch thinner for the next few years – I have to believe something less noticeable but even stronger replaces them. The extra long hug or our clasped hands or the strong arm thrown over my shoulder. The shared laughter so hearty that it brings tears. The smile that translates as “you’re still a little bit crazy but you’re my mom.”

My sons are growing stronger, in invisible, untold ways so they can “break the webs of my weaving.” I’m resolved to that (I think.) But maybe, just maybe, we all leave a single thread or two dangling, just in case we need to hang on from time to time.