leavings

Yesterday, my younger son packed his camouflaged ruck sack, tossed it in the back of his car and set off for a National Guard weekend on Cape Cod. What would he be doing, I wondered. "Setting ambushes," he replied.

An ambush is a surprise attack, the kind of thing military and business spear-carriers learn. Is something a surprise when everyone learns to spring a similar trap? I don't know. I do know that I sometimes marvel at the things my kids learn as they venture forth and I am left behind.

Meanwhile, my older son sits often silent in front of his computer screen, sifting, shifting, entertaining himself and looking for a job that his college education in computer wizardry might make him suitable for. It's hard, looking for work. I wish I could relieve my son of some of that stress, but I am left behind ... every (wo)man has to learn ambushes and anxiety on their own.

My son-in-law received a firm offer for a new job yesterday -- something down along the
Rhode Island border. In engineering, his chosen field. It will be his third -- or is it fourth -- job since he got out of school a couple of years ago.

I would have thought such bouncing from job to job would be a minus on a resume, but everyone tells me that this is the way the game is played these days ... migrating, changing jobs, moving on. The housing market -- people who actually buy houses -- is taking a hit from this new reality.

My daughter and son-in-law will be moving out after moving in several months back. They're excited. I am excited for them. And yet feel strangely left-behind once more. It's nothing rational or even that intense or self-pitying ... just sort of confusing: I am the wake of a speedboat that has sped on.