Sweet Sorrow? Seriously?

William Shakespeare is often revered for having written plays that are telling in all times, not just his own. But when Juliet says, “Parting is such sweet sorrow” in Act Two of Romeo and Juliet, I have to wonder if maybe the Bard missed the mark on this one. I get the sorrow, but sweet? Where do you detect sweetness, Will?

I say this finally writing the blog post I have not been writing. Have you ever had a project that you knew you had to do, but you had no great desire to do it. So you found other projects, maybe of lesser importance, so you could work on those, never getting around to the one hanging over your head. Of course, when you eventually finish the one you must do, it is a big sense of relief, but you can’t bring yourself to do it until you just do it. (Not in a Nike way, just in a resigned-to-your-fate way.)

For example, when each new semester approaches, I have to set up the learning management system. This is the computer portal where students get the videos and problems. This set up is tedious in the extreme. I set due dates and load videos and write the syllabus which is mostly standardized, so there is little interesting about it to me. (Probably none too interesting to my students either. I write an amazing syllabus, but no one is giving Pulitzer Prizes for best syllabus.)

So instead I say to myself, “I could write a better problem for the midterm!” (The midterm is two months away, but writing problems is interesting.) I find things that I do need to do, but not really right now, so I can avoid the right now course set up that is so dry.

That’s what I have been doing as a blogger of late. There is a blog post in me that wants to come out. But I also don’t want to think about it, so I have been writing other posts so as to not write this one. I can’t not write it forever. (In truth, I could not write it forever. It’s not like I’m being paid to do this and there are job requirements. But it does feel dishonest not to write it forever.)

This past Monday was momentous; a change of season in the life of a man (this particular man) if you will allow the metaphor. We dropped off Syarra at Syracuse University. Our youngest child is now no longer a child. She’s off to pursue her adulthood, to get an education, to take steps in the life that is outside of our home.

I’m not the first parent to go through this. I’m probably not even the most verbally fluent parent to go through this. What can I say that hasn’t been said? My own experience of it.

Barren dorm

Monday itself was good. I was upbeat, so excited for Syarra. What an adventure? A new dorm room. New friends to be made. So many activities to participate in. We got to Syracuse. She checked into the dorm. We brought her stuff upstairs and helped her unpack. We gazed at the view out of her window. (It was grassy, but it is not the quad. Not all that is grass on campus is a quad. Or so I am told.) We bought some supplies and ate lunch. And then we left her.

Not barren dorm

There were no tears, no long clinging hugs. She was ready to go and to meet people. We were ready to let her be ready.

For me, Sunday night was the hard part. Looking at my daughter, knowing it was the last night of her just being a kid. For sixteen years, she had been ours, depending on us, bringing home love and tears and frustrations and laughter. This is my culinary adventure partner. (We love to try new things when we cook together.) This is my little mind reader. (When she was very young, she told us this was her superpower.) This was a face I could look at forever and enjoy seeing it. And I knew that Sunday night, it was the last of this.

Of course I will see her again. But she won’t be just a kid. She won’t be living with us. She will be growing in all kinds of ways and Alrica and I will find out who she is becoming from the sidelines now.

Really, I’m lucky. Syarra gave me a trial run. She spent her senior year abroad in Sarajevo. I didn’t get to be with her for ten months straight. But even then, I knew when she did return, she was still my child, my kid. Next time I see her (which will be a lot less than ten months) she will still be my child, just not my kid. She will be my young woman. And I will be proud.

I can hardly wait to find out who she becomes. I can hardly wait to find out what kinds of friends she makes, what clubs she joins, what classes she loves and hates, what stresses her out and what makes her smile. This is a huge adventure for her. I couldn’t be happier for her to sally forth into her own future. Happier for her.

This is also the launch of a huge adventure for Alrica and me. We have nothing tying us to any one place. We are living a completely nonstandard lifestyle. We might love it, we might hate it. But we’ll find out. We are using this new freedom our own way.

So I guess it’s not all sorrow. There is a lot of wonder, imagination, and hopeful anxiety mixed in with it. Parting is certainly sorrowful, plenty of it, but, I hate to admit, it's also a little bit sweet. Damn it! The Bard was right again. That guy!