The Silken Tent.

I know that my son who has just gone to university is okay for two reasons. One: he hasn't rung since he got there, but has instead sent a series of cheerful text messages, mostly asking to be sent things he forgot to take with him. Two: I receive a text from a friend who lives in Buckinghamshire to say he was seen laughing and dancing at a party. Her daughter has a friend at the same university and she spotted him in the background of her Snapchat story. Welcome to the 21st century.

"But are you okay?" A different friend asks, in a different text message. I send a long reply with possibly more detail in it than she requires. While waiting for an answer I go downstairs from my office to make a cup of tea and while standing in front of the kettle it occurs to me that I won't need to make a cup of tea for Middle One, or for Eldest. My phone beeps with a reply from the friend and there are no words, only an emoji of a face crying rivers of tears.

Monday morning I prepare to go and sit in a windowless room and talk to lonely elderly people. "This might not be exactly what I need at the moment," I say to my husband, as I load things into my bicycle basket.

"No," he says. "But it might be what they need."

In the windowless room a 95-year-old lady on the other end of the telephone tells me your children never really leave you and her daughter rings her twice a day. She adds that when she looks back on her life her biggest regret is that she wasn't a good enough mother. "I wish I'd been more patient," she says, and a silent stream of tears runs down my face.

"Please don't reproach yourself," I say "You must have been a wonderful mother or your daughter wouldn't be ringing twice a day."

"You're making me cry," she says.

Monday evening I go to the pub for a meeting of mums called to arrange a forthcoming weekend away. People get out diaries or iPhones, or diaries and iPhones. I don't get out anything because I don't know when I'm going to be free, because I don't know when I'm going to be busy. "I'm going to be student," I say, "but I haven't got my timetable yet."

"What will you be busy doing when you're a student?" another mum asks.

"Laughing and dancing at parties," I say.

"Can I come?" she says.

"Yes," I say.

"How are you feeling?" asks another mum, "about your middle one being at university?" When I tell her she quotes a bit of A September Song by Pam Ayres - "The energy, the racket, all the songs you loved to play, and I won't know where to turn to when the music dies away." Which makes me smile.

Tuesday, my sister-in-law rings to suggest Youngest has a sleepover with his cousins and asks if I'd like to meet her for tea on Saturday, and then again for lunch on Sunday, all of us. I reply that would be lovely, and it reminds me to send a text to my niece to thank her for the letter she sent me. 

Wednesday I go for a long walk with Kay who suggested it as an antidote to feeling sad. When I pick her up in the car she looks at me suspiciously. "Have you been crying?" she says. "Only a tear or two," I reply, "because of the music."

Thursday I lie in a hot bath before bedtime and read a cool poem by Robert Frost. 

The Silken Tent.

She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when a sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

So that in guys it gently sways at ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole,

That is its pinnacle to heavenward

And signifies the sureness of the soul,

Seems to owe naught to any single cord,

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To everything on earth the compass round,

And only by one's going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air

Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

 
Which makes me cry. 

 Friday I meet up with another friend in the evening, who also has a son who went to university last weekend, and when I ask her how she is, I get out my tissues.

Love E x

@DOESNOTDOIT

P.S.  Late on Sunday I read the following by Gertrude Stein, "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." Which makes me laugh out loud.

(I wrote this before the destruction of Chestnut Avenue, I'll be writing about that next week.)