I take my treats to the small table, relishing this milestone, but hoping nobody I know enters the bakery. I swallow potential tears with each sip of coffee. There’s a lot to do today. Laundry, marketing, meal prep.  After the coffee, I walk outside to the boulevard. I’m not enjoying myself quite as much as I’d imagined. I’m pushing an empty stroller because I walked you to school. Cars speed by. I’m one of just a few pedestrians. I examine the hues of my feelings and see the color of the sky at midnight, but there is another color, too. The verdant green of a meadow that beckons to me, come run!  In a few hours, I’ll pick you up and we’ll have the afternoon together. By the end of the day, I know I’ll be looking forward to dropping you off tomorrow. I wonder if tomorrow’s goodbye will be easier.

2006

The airport is buzzing. We are one of many families pulling large canvas duffel bags, each one filled with everything our children could possibly need for their year in Israel. I’m saying goodbye to you, Adina, my firstborn. We’ve been through a few rough years. The life I chose and wanted you to love; the rules you struggled with. You give Daddy a hug, then me. It feels steely gray. The anger is still there. You join your friends at the escalator, turn at the top and wave, then you’re gone. I’m left in a color wheel of confusion. What could I have done differently? Would Israel work its magic? I miss you already, and yet, I need this break. But there goes my baby girl.

2008

Now it is your turn in the airport, my gentle second child, Tziporah. I don’t want to let go of you because I’m not done. I remember when your Russian nursery teacher told me, “She go around.” If another child was bothering you, you simply walked around them, avoiding confrontation. Always my easy one, you didn’t get as much attention as the others. I knew you weren’t always happy, but you rarely complained. By now, I’ve learned that this gap year is a push-and-pull kind of thing. I push you away to become who you must, then pull back because I’m your mother and you still need me. As usual, you smile, but there are also tears, the color of a fading blue sky at the end of a road. I promise myself that when you come home, I’ll give you more of me.

2012

I pull up to the curb by the fenced-in asphalt yard of your new school. This was your choice, sensitive Miri, my fourth and youngest daughter. I am hopeful that you’ll be happy here. You needed more room to express yourself — more love, less fear. In nursery, you cried at drop-off every day for two months. Now I watch you open the gate, enter the yard, and look at strange, new faces. You turn back again and wave. I blow you a kiss. I know you’re afraid but excited for a new beginning. I am not afraid; I’m proud. You advocated for yourself in a world that doesn’t always encourage it. This goodbye is the color of dawn with its hues of violet, gold and indigo blue.

2023

I’m walking you, Yaakov, down the aisle toward your chuppah. You’re my youngest child and only son, and the tears don’t stop. I can’t believe that in the midst of so much pain, there can also be simchah. I have been saying goodbye to you, my bochur, for a few years now. And now, we stand under the chuppah as your kallah approaches. She will be your everything. My tears flow for Klal Yisrael and for myself, and because this goodbye is colored by the nature of things. Daughters come back, but sons cleave to their wives. My nest is truly empty. Israel is at war. There is so much loss and sadness. Goodbye to a world that will never be the same. It’s the many hues of broken glass — a bittersweet prism of every color G-d makes.

2024

The cold morning hits my face as I roll my suitcase to the waiting car. Back to you, my Shira — all grown up now — as you walk us out, cheeks rosy from the frosty air and the curls of your sheitel mussed by the wind. You look about three years old right now. I hug you like I have so many times before in a decade of visits. “I’m so proud of you,” I say, wiping my cheek. “Gosh, I feel like such a Bubby, crying when it’s time to leave.”

“You are a Bubby,” you say, and we have a good laugh.

You stand there now, a happy but tired mommy of five, waving goodbye as we pull away. When we return, the delicious, fleeting infant stage of your youngest will have passed.  Your five-year-old, who already doesn’t let me hug her as much as I want to, will need a different kind of love. Soon there will be a bar mitzvah.

“It goes faster and faster,” I say to my husband. His eyes are glassy, too.

As we drive to the airport, I examine the colors of this goodbye. It’s a palette of nostalgia, gratefulness, the deepest kind of love, and the desire for Moshiach to finally arrive, so I can live for a thousand years and never have to say goodbye again.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 916)