“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”—Hermann Hesse

Drenched from endless showers, bare and spindly branches stretch out in skeleton forests. Aching to open, soft leaves cocoon inward like caterpillars from hidden buds. An autumn process prepares to enact a reverse metamorphosis. Divulged by the rising sun, what once was barren suddenly emerges flush with color. A profusion of green vibrates into being. Little leafy children shiver with excitement, calling to the dawn. 
 
I’ve found my way to the black circular swing hanging from a massive oak steps from our back deck. The tree’s lower branches—her arms—reach outward and upward away from me, a conductor in ready position. I’m draped over the spiderweb weave of the large pendulum. My back is flat on the rough texture, legs dangling, and my bare feet are touching the patch of ground beneath where dragging sneakers have worn away the grass. Pushing myself backward until I’m on tippy-toe and releasing, gently swinging forward, my warm skin and bathing-suited body meet with the cool dusk air. The contrast between the temperature of the breeze and my skin enlivens my senses. I’m gazing up into a canopy of branches and swinging back and forth in long slow strides. The quality of green emanating from the newly birthed leaves is therapy for my mind, the rocking of the swing soothing to my spirit. I’m at once alone in the world and connected to every living being.
 
I tuck my feet up on the edge of the swing frame for a little while, and then they are down again where I push my soles off the damp earth—each pass a commitment to staying a little longer. Time alone on a swing in a quiet place. I’m a child of the earth, cradled and noticing the spaces between the branches, the way the remaining light of the day causes the leaves to shimmer and glow. Spreading out in every direction, a maze of limbs above combined with the gentle sway of my body in the space of cool air below seems to carry me back and forth across time. Cascading backward I imagine my connection with all who came before—sharing in my bloodline, surviving as long as they could—then arriving at the center, I’m carried through my current timeline surrounded by my own creations and imprint, and then moving forward into the sensation of what is yet to come. Swinging brings perspective to the ephemeral and cyclical nature of life and the family trees within which we each are rooted. 
 
It's compelling to recognize our lineage as echoing back through the birth-life-death cycle across generations until the beginning of time. Despite any exterior knowing of personality or relation, the internal landscape hosts us all as one family, one people handing off a baton from one chapter of reality to the next. Known intimately are only the faces of my mother and father and their mothers and fathers who in the last century kissed and wept, toiled and danced, as we all are born and blessed to do. The stories and lives that came before—those faces and events are foreign and outlandish as if plucked from a gritty novel, and yet, strung and bound together none-the-less. What lived in them, is alive in me. Their dreams and struggles are seeds born through a mother’s womb, some of which will only pass through me and on to the next generation, only finally coming to fruition through the lives of the children of my children. To draw out the essence of each life that came before us—and what it revealed—is to understand more about ourselves. To reflect on what has been, is to know how far we’ve come.
 
I wore a navy blue dotted-Swiss dress with buckled shoes for an Easter photo in her garden. When I think of her, it is almost always in the context of her flowers—bunches of daffodils that occupy my mind in a way that I cannot seem to corroborate with others who knew her for her roses. Once I fell from the dock where he kept his boat—The Mona Mi—a name and wooden sign we’ve held onto despite the vessel having long since sailed away. He prided himself on leaving things a little better than he’d found them. Many hands make light the work, he’d say. Another kitchen table in another place reflective of contentment as a way of life. I could hang my hat any old place. We were the early risers where the clock in the hallway chimed on the hour and parquet floors clicked when we walked across them. Her smile and laugh echo across time—she was dead serious when she implored me, Meghan, don’t ever get old. He took excellent care of his cars and his daughter, Dolly Babe, who could not live alone. He typed journal entries of time spent at The World’s Fair in Queens, itemizing activities and money spent. Standing in my childhood room with tears in his eyes he admired a poem I pinned to the wall—the only one to notice. 
 
Those who came before, they live among us. 
We must only think of them, and they will appear. 
 
--
Although I have complained, I haven’t really minded all the driving. My lumbar spine would tell a different story, but the essential truth is that I have treasured every single moment spent alone on the road with Jonah. Given that he has quickly, bitter-sweetedly, morphed from a delightful and gentle mannered boy with a profusion of energy into a confident and capable young man, I will take anything I can get, back pain or not.
 
I would be lying if I said it hasn’t been deeply, breathtakingly, painful to witness Jonah’s departure from childhood. The years spent knowing him and caring for him through every age has given me a purpose. It has been a privilege to behold and in the words of Hermann Hesse, “If I know what love is, it is because of you.” Both of my children have given me this gift of agape—a love only on par with the love of our creator. 
 
Cautioned not to blink, I gave myself over to the devotion and sacrifice this love begged of me. Still, here I am, unprepared to let go and face a life with loosened strings. How near it seems I was crouching at his side, gathering up the strings of his shoes ensuring they would not come undone. 

A few new and impending realities.
 
He could feasibly live alone. 
He could thrive without me. 
I know he could. So does he.
 
This does not mean he doesn’t still need me or that our relationship is by any means based on need alone. It does mean that I could sob—and I have—when I think of all we’ve been through and enjoyed together and how this chapter is like sand between my fingers, transforming into the next before I am ready. I think of how much he used to look to me for everything and how now he has the building blocks—the roots—necessary to be steady in his own judgment, in the face of his own life, and on the brink of a vast and dangerous (if desperately beautiful) and all-too-wonderfully-enticing world. 
 
Despite the sting of life moving forward, it has also been deeply satisfying to witness Jonah mature and become sufficient in all the ways he is meant to.It is helpful that we both acknowledge and have agreed, I’m not done here. But I could be. He may even think at times that I should be. This might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done—letting him go, letting him fly in the way he is called, in whatever direction that might me. This is no small statement when measured up against his very birth, when measured up against cancer.

Is there any other way to say it? They don’t prepare you for how much of loving is letting go. If I could squeak out words through my tears I might say, my heart resides in every cell of you. My heart beats in your own chest as you run and jump onto the sofa, knocking pillows to the floor, needling your brother, grinning with your sparkly eyes, admitting when you are wrong. Because I love you, I will let you take the wheel, take in an insatiable amount of information in all its form, and walk out the door—away to another place where you will be taken up by other things. I will help open the doors for you and usher you through. 
 
Residing somewhere in the background of your mind, I will be present in my own life, separate from the excitement and wonder of other beings who radiate with your same age. Your own perfect age. Together you will exude new beginnings. You are giants in tiny doll houses. Alices-in-Wonderland, arms growing right out through the windows. Things cultivated here in our home, may for a time seem unimportant. Slow cooked meals, folded clothing, reminders about homework and the suggestion for reading on the couch. This is fully to be expected and I will tuck away your childhood treasures, holding them safe for you—the Legos, the drawings, the shells—knowing that as distant as these items may feel for the time, your heart will one day return to them, back around to the dozen or so years you spent expanding your indominable spirit and creating a cacophony of sounds between these walls on the cusp of the sea. This critical and life-giving knowledge lives in the memory of my own departures to other continents and cities, friends and phases, worlds away from the people who lived on in my wake, perhaps pining for me.
 
In the winter, the demands of the driving grew more intense than what I’d come to expect—evening practices held in far off and hard to reach places. Some of our deepest conversations and most comfortable silences occurred with the two of us in the front seat traveling on dark and snowy nights. The flurry and excitement of high school was fully welcomed, only eclipsed by the one quality we missed—spaciousness. We longed at times to breath and unwind. In the car, we were given this opportunity to slow down. It took time to get the places we were going. When I forced the phone and entertainment away, time moved even more slowly. We were given the gift of being together and breathing in the same oxygen, moving through space from one location to the next. 
 
Often, we talked, listening to music, but sometimes he would sleep, and I would look over at him, remembering the baby, the toddler, the young boy who so often dozed in his car seat in the back. A confusing mix of emotions would arise, sometimes coupled with tears I quickly wiped away before he awakened. I felt so fortunate for this life, for this simple and complete love I share with my son, for all it has meant to be his mother.
 
Last summer, away on a trip, Jonah purchased a work of art that he gave to me. It was a print and arrived later at home in the mail.It’s an ethereal piece with geometric structures piled upon each other, then occupied by cats and birds with an ancient tree growing from the top level. Wanting to hang it for some time, I finally discovered a gold and black frame that brought out a similar palette in the piece. I hung it in a sacred space where I write and can see it every day. 
 
Months later, I hung another print that he also gave to me, just below the first work. This piece was created by Jonah and for it he received an award at school acknowledging his skill creating duplicates of the original through a traditional process of printmaking. The original creation is a black and white ink drawing that features a round bear in the foreground. Everything about it contrasts nicely with the other work, and even though Jonah created it himself, he hadn’t noticed the way alternate shapes were hidden within the mountain scape drawn behind the bear. After receiving it, I pointed out to him that within the silhouette of the mountain peaks I could make out three howling wolves. Their heads are lined up in a row, each with their noses tilted up in unison. One of the three wolves is situated directly beneath a cloud in such a way that the cloud is smoke protruding from its mouth. 
 
Every time I look over at this creation from where I sit to write, I catch sight of the wolves and recognize myself. I merge with them. I am those three wolves, howling out the ache and the beauty of this life. Making known the precious gift of time and of having reached a peak in the climb. I’m amazed by the providence of Jonah unknowingly creating something that speaks so deeply to my being. 
 
Those wolves are also evidence. They speak of one person’s ability to notice elements of a scene that others may not see. They are my witness to my son that life is full of mystery and hidden things. Proof that we may rely on others, standing behind us, noses tipped up in the air, ready to howl and respond when needed. ✨