guilt and goodbyes

I wonder whether all parents fear that they will turn into their own parents and inflict the same kind of suffering on their children that their parents inflicted on them. (That I think these sorts of thoughts may explain why I don't have children.) Certainly Robin's last posting expresses that. Her yearning for the lost innocence of her beach childhood --never mind that it might not have been so great if she had stayed there --was the defining tragedy of her childhood, if I am not being too dramatic. Will this be replayed in her daughters' lives? Will they adapt to life in Colorado?
I hope so. Maybe they will like it. Who knows? It will change their young lives in ways we can't imagine, and they have aboslutely no say in it. Who knows? Maybe it will all be all right.
With absolutely no good reason for it, I feel more optimistic this morning. Through weeping over wisteria. Goodbye to scrubby pine trees and red clay and decaying tobacco barns covered with kudzu. It's been great , but it's time to move on.
I had my last day at work yesterday. Such a strange feeling, after nearly 11 years in the same place. So much has happened, so many people that I knew and loved, or knew and was annoyed by. Work seems so much like a family, like it will just go on forever, everyone slowly getting older and more adjusted to one another's quirks. It seems like it will go on forever -- until one day it doesn't. You're done. You clean out your desk, you imagine the place going on without you, and it's like a vision of your own death.