And Another One Leaves the Nest

In a famous German song, little Hans ("Hänschen klein") a sturdy child typically pictured with a big hat and a walking stick twice his size is cheerfully marching away from home. In the background his mother,  the family pets, even a bird and a rabbit are looking anxious, but Hänschen pays them no mind--he's on his way. Although I keep trying to cheer myself up with the thought of how much less time I'll be spending on laundry and cooking, I'm exactly in the position of the mother in this video. Barely visible in the background, leaning over her Bavarian balcony, the mom dabs at her eyes. I know just what she's feeling. She's feeling what the Steve Martin dad in Father of the Bride feels when his twenty-year-old daughter is telling him she's fallen in love. He blinks and sees an adorable child in braids tied with ribbons lisping, "Dad! I met a wonderful man and we're getting married."

My child and I are in the same position. He's walking down that road all by himself, except when he needs advice on laundry or cooking, and except when I offer unasked for advice about staying clear of COVID in a dorm. Of all this charming folksong's many incarnations, the scariest is perhaps the one in Sam Peckinpah's 1977 film, Cross of Iron, about a platoon of German soldiers in 1943 on the Eastern Front. The ironies of men and boys marching off to this tune in a doomed war are the stuff of maternal nightmare. Of course the kid is eighteen and just like his brother, who also went off right on schedule at eighteen, perfectly able to make his way in the world. I can't help still being the hen hunting around for the eggs that were right underneath me, safe and sound, two minutes ago, even as I salute my grown-up boys and look forward, but with an aching heart, to the baby's departure in a few years.