by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

Every couple of months for the past few years a good friend and I have met over coffee. Our caffeine-fueled morning confabs are always time well spent. We share a love of music, writing, humor, and coffee. We talk a lot about our kids, a little about politics. I love and admire him. He’s smart, creative, driven, and very interesting.

Good friends can go months without talking and then pick right up as if no time has passed. So, last Friday, as I slid into the booth at Corky’s at 8:30 a.m., I asked, “How’s it going?” and we were off and running.

He began talking about his suddenly empty nest, how weird it is, and how badly he misses his two kids, who are off at college. As I age and more and more friends go through this, I’m reminded that the cliche of parents going into party mode after their offspring fly the coop doesn’t always hold true. My friend was aching for his kids.

“It’s so quiet,” he said.

I tried to cheer him. “What an accomplishment!” I told him. And it’s true. If you’re sending your kids off to college it means you did something significant: you raised them up, helped to keep them on a path of sorts, and gave them wings to fly. “You guys should be proud,” I said.

But it wasn’t that he wasn’t proud. Of course he was. He was lonely. And I understood.

We parents of teens are prone to daydreaming about what we’ll do after our kids have flown. I talk a good game about how I might spend my golden years living somewhere coastal, green and serene, but the truth is I have mixed feelings. Wife Lisa and I dream about living in Ireland one day, but the talk always peters out when I imagine being that far from my children, even if they happen to be adults. It’s a self-imposed puzzle with two solutions. Both have their drawbacks, but one feels unacceptable. Such is life.

I am aware that kids need their independence. I am also aware that I am a big baby, and don’t want to be far from them. Perhaps that will change. One child of mine is completely independent, with kids of her own, and she and I are both surviving. Another is 23 and just returned home from four years in San Francisco at SFSU. We both survived that separation. I imagine she will leave again and nobody will keel over and die from a broken heart. My two youngest are 19 and 15. Neither is ready to launch, but I can see a day when they will be. They’re both smart, hardworking, kind humans. I’m sure they’ll be OK. I’m not sure I will.

My rational brain tells me they’ll be fine. My big baby brain tells me they’ll never be fine without me around.

I’ve spent time with a lot of older folks in recent years. Some are hearty and hale, right up until the end. Others revert to childlike versions of themselves in some ways. I can’t help but think my reluctance to be apart from my kids is a manifestation of the latter.

Thankfully, I have a little time yet to figure this out. Some might say I need to grow up. Maybe they’re right. Can my kids have an exemption?

More caffeine and great advice

My friend and I also delved into my now two-year obsession with Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and how it has affected my daily life to the point where I need to take breaks from being outraged.

I walk around with this 24/7. I can’t believe what I have seen and continue to see, hear, and read from Palestine. The images and mounting atrocities are heartbreaking, infuriating, and deeply disappointing. The nonstop horror has exacted a toll on my mental health, and I suspect, my physical well-being. I am of course aware that mine is less than a drop in the ocean when compared to the incalculable suffering Palestinians have endured and are enduring right now. Still, I shared this with my friend, because after our empty nest discussion wound down, he asked me how I was doing.

“My life is fine,” I said. “My kids are all doing well and thriving, and I’m grateful. But I’m full of dread over Gaza. All the time. And I don’t know how to shut it off.”

What followed was one of the most deeply compassionate and helpful bits of advice I have ever received. He told me a story about a friend of his who lived in Baghdad in the early 2000s, when the U.S. was pulverizing the ancient city, and civilians were dying by the hundreds in bombings. Despite this on the ground terror, his friend in Baghdad was in the midst of the greatest thing of all: he was falling love.

I am paraphrasing, but he told me, “Even during war, there is love.”

What profound words those were.

I took this to mean that it’s not a sin to be grateful for your life, even when others are suffering, and that love is stronger than all the bombs falling on Gaza right now.

These words have helped me.

I remain enraged and actively working to raise awareness about the Palestinians’ suffering in Gaza, but when I find myself tumbling down the rabbit hole of hopelessness, I remember I am surrounded by love, and it’s OK to be grateful for that fact.

I tell ya, that was one hell of a breakfast.