Puzzle Pieces

The night we got home from dropping Nolan off at school, I was packing my bike pannier for work in the morning.  My iPhone rang its zen bell indicating I received a text message.  It's Him! I reached for my phone so fast I skinned my knuckles on the alarm clock and scared the cat half out of his wits .  Tap, tap, tap, tap--in went my security code.  It wasn't Nolan, it was Rayna.

"Dad, are you there? I'm sad,"  she texted from the living room 30 feet away.
"yeah, punkin, I'm here, what's wrong" I typed back.
"I'm missing a puzzle piece."
"From which puzzle?," I typed back, thinking my puzzle-loving daughter had moved on rather quickly.
"I have a five piece puzzle, I'm missing one piece and I can't find it," she finished.

She counts our pug, Porter, as 1/5 of the family and Nolan was our lost puzzle piece.  Rayna was on to a good metaphor.

We are a tight-knit family. We have done everything together--we once spent a week in the pouring rain, in the cabin of our 34-foot sail boat and had a ball. At least that's how I remember it now. That's pretty tight knitting and there is a strength in that, that you begin to rely on.  We four, or five if you count Porter, fit comfortably together.  But what happens when one puzzle piece gets pulled out?

Doctors say you often see familiar things that have changed as they were, not as they are.  You brain plays a trick on itself and sees what is not there.  That can be a handy thing in matters of the heart. The trick of a family member leaving--to go to college or moving for a job--is that you feel what is missing.  The hug, the voice, the footsteps upstairs are all missing. Not gone, just not here.  They feel like missing puzzle pieces.

I always thought that the strength of our tight family would be a comfort when a puzzle piece went missing.  After all, Nolan began the slow drift away that all teenagers must after getting his driver's license and the independence that little card brings.  We had survived that just fine, once we worked out the laws of physics regarding perpetually empty gas tanks.

But, I find I am unprepared for the strength of the emotions I am feeling with Nolan going to college. Sure, it is still very fresh, but they are so intense. As much as I mentally prepared to have Nolan leave the house and head to college, it doesn't seem enough.  For months, Shannon and I joked about the little things he did, the little gnaw-marks on the threads that held us together that would make it easier to say "see you at Thanksgiving!" Those little reminders of a good good-bye are absent now.

How is it that other parents I know send their kid off without a second thought?  When you ask how they managed, they sigh in relief and roll their eyes as if they have just edged past the "Free Windows Giveaway" salesperson at Home Depot without divulging their email address. Wohoo! pack the bags, honey, we're going to Cabo!

I am so not there. 

Well, we are not a card board puzzle, complete only in multiples of 250.  We are a dynamic family capable of spreading out and filling in, adapting to change. Nolan is a short drive away and between Facebook, email text, phone and Skype, we ought to be able to get pretty close to the "feel" of him being home. My brain says the puzzle piece is not missing, it's out becoming a better piece.  And it really is right here with us, as strong a piece of our family puzzle as ever before.  My heart however, like Rayna's, is playing tricks with my head.