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Jewish World Review Oct. 5, 1999 / 25 Tishrei, 5760
MY DAUGHTER, Samantha, has a request.
“Next year,” she says, “can’t we put the sukkah on the other side of the
house?” She explains that if we move the wooden lean-to from the garden to
the level, concrete slab, we won’t spend the autumn nights pulling the legs
of the folding chairs out of the dirt as we did this time. It would be nice
if our guests could eat sitting upright.
I am floored to find her thinking about next year at home, and the sukkah
we’ll build. For me, next fall is a huge black hole. The sukkah will be
there, but Samantha, having moved on to college, will probably be gone.
The thought’s a killer.
My own senior year in high school has long-ago been composted, mashed
into decayed memories that only very recently became fertile ground. I can’t
separate the debris of high school from the vitality of college, or myself
from my mom. What I recall is that we spent many arduous years trying to
accomplish what the orchid and bromeliad do naturally; splitting off into
independent beings.
Only part of the problem was money. My parents didn’t know they were
pinching me at the roots, having insisted since sixth grade that there was a
perfectly good local college I could attend for free.
The larger problem was cultural expectations: no one in my family had
gone to college, none had lived away from home before marriage. None of my
parents’ siblings ever lived more than an hour drive from Grandpa or each
other. I was expected to live as they had lived, for what else was there?
There was simply no guide-book for parents on how to prepare a child for an
autonomous life.
And then there was the bigger issue: my mother’s own unblossomed hopes.
Mom was way ahead of her time, a woman who did not need a woman’s movement to
tell her that her energies and smarts deserved a more hospitable soil than
Eisenhower’s America, and the Little Woman with the Apron who earned her “pin
money” typing envelopes and balancing corporate books. When my mother went
off to work, the neighbors leaned out the window.
“What’s the matter, your husband can’t support you?” one asked.
Until the day she graduated from college, at age 59, my mother resented
my opportunities, if not exactly me.
Well, OK, it’s all ancient history now. Samantha knows that
college is expected, and none of it is free. She’s already lived across
country, knows how to use an ATM and email; freedom is part of our family
terrain. I resent her nothing.
But if everything is as expected, why then the sense that the ground is
shifting, and that my leg is stuck in deep soil? I am prepared for
everything it seems, but the depth of family love.
Therefore: For independent women, the best recourse is satisfying work at
an early age. A woman who maintains her career, keeps networking and
growing, keeps a healthy social life with friends, husband or lovers, keeps
her resume fresh and her skills in the public eye, will protect herself from
unnecessary pain when the children leave.
O.K.
But out there, among the readership of this very webzine, are scores of
women -- and yes, men, -- who did everything according to the rules, who
worked, stayed independent, kept vital careers and social lives. And who
miss their children desperately, and grieve for the family life that seems
more valuable as the years bring this early stage to a close.
We’re afraid to talk about it. We think it unseemly that you know. In
this age of the dysfunctional family, who could predict, let alone account
for, a love so strong, that feels so good?
Women like me, who trained our children to grow straight and tall and
need us less, now need them more. My daughter made her own doctor’s
appointments in fourth grade; bought her own ballet slippers when she was 10.
When she was a baby she knew what it meant to say “Mommy’s working.” While
I was off at work, I knew that good daycare would suffice. And it did. But
while she was happily trying out her competence, I was growing more attached.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. But I’ll be damned if I’ll miss one
choir practice or one audition, with my own eyes.
It strikes me that the more independent the woman, the harder the cut.
“I can’t meet you, Ariel is coming home for the night!” says my friend,
Marika, of her daughter, a college freshman. My friends thrill at the
prospect of a rare breakfast with adult children who live not miles away.
The woman’s movement, which provided us with such wisdom in the early
years, protects us from nothing at this point. I feel only what parents
throughout all time have known, a love for my family life and that time spent
together at home so strong that I cannot bear for it to end, even though the
end is good and proves that I’ve done the job right.
Love, unfathomable, unanticipated Love. And one more year to
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Digging in Deep
By Marlene Adler Marks
The myth of Family Love, as the woman’s movement explained it to me, is
that it is stronger at the root; most intense when the children are infants,
growing to strange antipathy during the teen years, then finally restoring
itself to respect when the children are adults. 
JWR contributor Marlene Adler Marks is a columnist and author of "A Woman's Voice: Reflections on Love, Death, Faith, Food & Family Life ". Send your comments to her by clicking here.
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