I can remember clutching to my mom’s leg on the first day of kindergarten and begging her not to abandon me; I was unwilling to relinquish her safety. Fast-forward 15 years and not a whole lot has changed.
On August 16th, 2013 I started at Eugene Lang College, 2,895 miles away from my hometown of St.Helena, CA, where I grew up. I miss her every day, I may not cling anymore, but calling just replaced that. I was so embarrassed about missing her that I would hide my tears in the shower and go for walks whenever I called her, desperate to keep up the appearance that I was mature and independent.
But how could I not call and talk to her when my writing the essay teacher looked exactly like my Uncle Bob? Or when I all of a sudden decided I needed to know how to invest in the stock market. One time, I called her for the exact recipe of the roast chicken she made. I wasn’t making a roast chicken, I didn’t even have an oven in the dorms, but I needed the comfort of knowing the recipe.
Just after moving in, I walked in on my roommate rearranging dust on the kitchen table of our alphabet city apartment. Her parents had just left and there was that stillness in the air that happens when a loved one leaves. She suddenly turned and blurted out, “It’s OK that I miss her already, right?”
I was floored and overjoyed at the same time. I wasn’t alone.
Not only was I not the only one, we weren’t the only two. Turns out this is a thing that people feel all over campus, all over New York and all over the world, and not just when they are young, beyond that, even into their 60s.
Apparently, our avoidance tactics –the walks and the showers — were identical. The walk to school was, for both of us, a 20 minute time slot to chat with mom. Slightly embarrassed, she told the story of once calling three or four times in one day and her mom finally drawing the line.
I talked to my mom about the idea of missing your mom and she smiled knowingly. “It never stops,” she said. Nevertheless, I was concerned about my attachment. I was ready for the phase where it only happened every once in awhile instead of every day, so I called my therapist back home, Laura.
I told her that I was seriously frightened that I was never going to be able to live without calling my mom every day. I let it out in one long stream of blabber, ending with a defeated, “Help.”
She said, there is no problem calling your mom every day, it’s the fact that it scares you not to call her that is the problem. She told me she’d seen this a million times and to limit myself to one call per week.
I didn’t think I could do it, but the fright of not talking to her was overshadowed by the fright of dependently talking to her, so I gave it a go.
It was harder than I’d care to admit, I’d cheat and call to ask *burning* questions that couldn’t wait until Sunday.
But then something amazing happened, I woke up two weeks later and I didn’t need to call her. I went a whole day where I could think about her and watch the thought go by without consequence. As a direct result, I was forced to become more engaged and genuine with the people
in front of me rather than my mom on the other end of a long distance phone call.
Turns out she felt the same way. “I always imagined my role as a mother as the guard rails on the Golden Gate Bridge. You had a lot of room and freedom, but I was always guiding you in a certain direction and protecting you from the real bad fall. And if things get really bad, you can just hang on for a while.”
It is OK to miss your mom. I miss mine every day It just turns out I don’t need her every day.
