Movin' On: Helping Preschoolers When Friends Move Away

 NOTE: This post appeared previously on The Chicago Moms Blog in June 2010.

We just got word that our closest friends in Chicago are moving. Moving back East, moving away from here, moving away from us. I am so sad - of course I am - these friends are loyal and kind, and they understand the challenges of raising a young family far from the benefits of grandparents and extended family. I can't count the times that one of us has come to the other's aid, watching the kids when a husband was supposed to be home in time for an appointment or a meeting, or doing a weeknight dinner together when the husbands were both traveling. And what about all the fun we had? Adjusting to their departure is going to be major.

But enough about me.

I have no idea how to help my four year old son manage this process. He was 14 months old when we moved to Chicago, and the two girls in this family were his first friends. He goes to school with the younger sister, and I sort of think they believe they are related. Frequently I find them hugging and sharing some kind of secret - they spend more time together than they do with any other friends.
When I told my son these friends were moving, he just burst into tears. I think that he understands the concept because my husband and I know that his career will likely take us even further West, and we try to casually mention that we probably won't live in the same house forever. But the concepts of time and space are so challenging for our little concrete thinkers! When he started to cry, I was shocked. Well, and I started to cry, too - empathy tears: His pain was becoming my pain.

How do I help him cope with the loss of friends without dragging the process out forever? Should I just wait for issues to come up or should I preempt them with questions and conversation? As it is, my son kept coming up with ideas to get around the reality of the move. He insisted that he could stand on the roof of our house, grow wings, and fly to visit them whenever he wanted. Then he got real, and said we should make a special trip up from New York, where we vacation, to Boston to see them. Then he figured he could work in a little bonus for himself, suggesting that we meet them for a ball game at Fenway. So, he's still a four year old - that's encouraging!

He is, however, going to have to work through his feelings about all of this, and I am sure there will be times when it isn't pretty. That's okay. He''ll struggle with it, even if I'm not so sure how to help him figure it all out.



This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. Thanks to Suat Eman for the photo, courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Homecoming

Up those stairs in that little back bedroom is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar...
...You leave home, you move on, and you do the best you can...
-Miranda Lambert, "The House the Built Me"


There are important places in childhood: the football field behind my parents' house, our neighborhood pool in the summer, various friends' homes. In addition to my parents' home, these places are responsible for shaping my life.

One home stands tall among these important places - the home of my childhood best friend, now that godmother of our little daughter. At the end of this month, her parents will sell this house, where they lived for over 30 years, and they will move up the coast to live closer to family.  They leave behind a complex web of connections among friends and neighbors who are sure to feel the loss of their regular company.

But this house...I can close my eyes and I am there.  I am an 11 year old girl, flying back and forth on the long rope swing in the yard, belting our Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All," now playing "bank" with other girls: almost-sisters, really, three and six years younger than me - and not minding a bit.  Now hiding out with my best friend - now maybe 12 - behind the mostly unused bar in the basement - avoiding those same younger girls.  Sitting, 15 now, damp after swim team practice, wrapped in a towel and chilly in the air conditioning - eating dry cereal with a cold glass of milk nearby.  Getting endless good-natured grief (to this day!) for that odd little habit.  Friday night takeout from Continental Pizza, where my friends' dad would consistently make a gigantic stink about making sure his daughter's steak and cheese sub had absolutely NO black pepper on it.  He insisted to the staff at the restaurant that she would die if they put it on.  (No, really, he did.)  The package containing her sub routinely arrived with the initials WD - which, naturally, stood for "Woman Dies."  I mean, of course it did, right?  I can't count the number of Sunday mornings I went back to their house for brunch after Mass - where the entire six person family would sit talking for hours - hours! - about everything from the homily to schoolwork to debating current events.  And now I'm 32, coming by late at night - the night before their youngest daughter is to be married - to introduce our 3 month old girl - and they stayed up just to see us.

What a safe place their home was.  That vibe, that environment, doesn't happen without planning, without effort.  I admire - and often hope to emulate - the conscientious work that my dear friends' parents did to develop and maintain that open, generous, and warm tone in their home. Family was always, always first.  An effort to do nothing together - to have no specific agenda except to enjoy one another - is perhaps the deepest mark this family has made on my own hopes for our young family.

Enjoying the company of my children can be a tough one on my off, tired days - but when I bring some awareness to these tiny moments of being together - just hanging out - it brings me great joy to be near them.  A real conversation at the dinner table - one that lasts much longer than the food, when everyone stays because they want to stay and be together - great joy and love are present in those moments.  I am grateful to have been privileged to spend time at that table where I enjoyed hundreds of meals, snacks, and chats about almost-nothing.  And though the location of that table is about to change, its purpose will remain the same: the magnetic center of honest family joy.