Heartache

Funny morning. For some reason I woke up wanting to hear Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." So I put it on, and the music player happened to already be on repeat, so the song just kept playing over and over again. Have you ever paid attention to the words of this song? It's genuinely heartbreaking, and the lyrics have quite a deep meaning for me. So there was that ... the repetition of the song left me feeling more than a little fragile as I headed out to take the boys to school. (Yes, I could have just turned it off, but there's something about a song like that ... I just can't do it.)

When I got to the school, I saw a couple embracing just outside the school door, the woman wiping away tears behind sunglasses, her husband whispering in her ear. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know what this means — any mom who's ever had to leave her baby at a new place for a first time ... it is so amazingly hard.

The boys have been going to this school since last September and I've never seen that at this particular school before.

So Wilder and I dropped Hunter off at his classroom and headed down to the east side of the building where Wilder's class is. You have to walk by all the other classrooms to get there. Wilder skipped ahead and I saw a father rounding the hallway's bend with a look in his eye. And, sure enough, I rounded that bend myself to see another mom, that man's wife, in tears. Only this time she was a Middle Eastern woman, her head and most of her face covered, and I could only see her eyes. And I could hear her little boy, probably one year old, sobbing behind the closed door, and her, unable to walk away yet, standing outside that door and looking at her boy through the tiny window. And I looked at this mom's eyes and oh my god it broke my heart. I just wanted to go give her a big hug.

And how strange that I've not witnessed that particular scenario one time in 10 months and then twice in one day ... I feel for those women, and it also reminds me of how incredibly deep our bonds with our mothers are. And now I'm sitting here missing mine so very much. Ten years and my mom's utterly unavoidable absence can still elicit this much heartache.

Anyway, by now I'm sure both of those moms are fine. But I'm a wreck. Damn you Cohen!

Addendum: One little detail I left out — as we saw that second mom, Wilder was walking down the hall in front of me singing "Hallelujah." I love that kid.