Give Them Back…..

Give Them Back…..

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

Melancholy……

I received my two oldest daughters back for a day and a half

To joke with and talk to and spoil and stuff full of food

And pretend like things are just the same as they always were……

When they were little and helpless and all mine

But then today I had to give them back to college and society.

Of course they are not the same anymore…..

Not by a long shot!

Melancholy.

 

Melancholy……

I received my two oldest daughters back for a day and a half

Gathered together our entire family to celebrate Easter

And pretend like things are just the same as they always were……..

When the crowns of their heads struggled to reach my waist and the munificent Easter bunny was as real as the stars above

But then this afternoon I had to give them back to college and society.

Of course they’re no longer little girls anymore……

No, they’re young women now–beautiful, confident young women!

Melancholy.

 

Melancholy……

I received my two oldest daughters back for a day and a half

To reconnect my immediate family and to go visit their aging grandparents

And time-travel back ten years to an era when their world was immeasurably smaller, yet their aspirations still wonderfully intact

To a time when their basketball skills would allow them to be the next Jordan, their intellects the next Einstein, their ambitions the next Bill Gates

But today I had to give them back to college and society.

And then be left to deal with the fact our formerly tight-knit family grouping is slowly unraveling………

And knowing there isn’t a damned thing I can personally do to stop this relentless erosion!

Melancholy.

 

Melancholy……

I received my two oldest daughters back for a day and a half

And, oh, what a glorious day and a half those turned out to be!

To reunite as a family and celebrate the majesty of life as one pulsing, homogenous, FAMILY unit

Just as in years past……

…….but it isn’t years past anymore……

I realize this the second I drop my oldest daughter off at college, with our second distaff offspring following suit two hours and a hundred and twenty miles later

And as I turn south and head down lonely Highway 52 with my silent wife and last remaining daughter

I feel a vague aching down in the deepest reaches of my heart……

Like someone or something close to me has died.

And then suddenly, jarringly, unexpectedly……I realize that something has indeed expired………

An age of innocence has passed away, never to return in my lifetime

When my three girls were tiny and sweet and eternally cheerful, and nothing would or could ever interrupt that youthful Nirvana…….

Melancholy.

 

And yet–now something has……

 

Melancholy……

I welcomed my two oldest daughters back for a day and a half

To laugh and to tease and to pretend that things are just the same as they always were

But of course they aren’t anymore…….

That world—that cruel charade, that prevailing epoch of innocence, that ephemeral minute on life’s grand carousel–is gone forever

And it now exists only in a tiny, far-off sulcus of my memory

Bearing poignant witness to a time long past……

Melancholy.

 

Melancholy……

I collected my two oldest daughters for a day and a half to celebrate Easter

And celebrate we did, I tell you!!

We celebrated and manufactured merriment like there was no tomorrow!

But that time flew by like the wings of an eternally forlorn hummingbird

And now my girls are back at college where they belong, and I am back at home without them…..

Melancholy.

 

Oh, the awful, gut-wrenching melancholy this whole deal engenders deep down in my guts!!!!!