My son, Shogun, has been staying with me since mid-March, earning money by working at my company as a junior sysadmin. He left yesterday headed back to his Mom’s–he’ll be leaving for his two-year LDS church mission to Mongolia (!!) on June 13th, and he still has odds-and-ends to tie up; passport, Visa, ensuring he has all the necessary tidbits for the trip. What this will mean is that for the next 24 months, he’ll get one email per week to let us know how he’s doing, and unless I misunderstand the protocol, two calls per year home.

I have tremendously mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the thought of my only progeny being sandwiched ‘twixt Russia and China in the tundra for two years is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. On the other, I have phenomenal respect for him in having the sheer gumption to do it. Then there’s the practical aspect; speaking from sad and weary experience, I am fully aware that getting two years to learn how to take care of running your own household–laundry, dishes, food, personal hygiene (well, hell, he IS a 19, almost 20 year old guy, and us males of the species are not well-known for being great housekeepers)–could very well be a good thing and stand him in good stead when he returns and starts his college career.

All that taken, however, the overriding feeling at the moment is a gut-wrenching sadness in knowing I won’t see his face–with elements of both his mother and my genes–for at least two years.  Honestly, at this point, it’s hard to even type this much about it; a large portion of my psyche hasn’t come to grips with it yet.  Just too much to wrap my brain around.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancel’d woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a varnish’d sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan.
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

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