Some things won’t change. There will be family trips and dinners out. We’ll still pay for dental appointments, Doc Martens, and haircuts. We’ll spring for the groceries when they come to visit or move back home. There’ll be heartbreaks and celebrations and so much more of them and of being a parent. But it will be different, and I’m having all kinds of feelings.
Our two kids leave the nest in less than a month. The nest was half-emptied out four years ago when our daughter left for college. Now she’s graduated and is heading to grad school. She will be farther away this time. Our son is taking a gap year after high school. He’s leaving the country. Then he plans to come back and attend community college. Maybe he’ll live at home, but maybe not.
One moment I’m bursting with joy and pride at the cool humans we helped to create. Moments later, I’m choking on some of my regrets. There’s a hollow pit in my stomach thinking about the one too many times that I was backed into a corner with grief, anxiety or other commitments and wasn’t present for them. That’s when the future loneliness of missing them weighs heavy on me. I am so excited that they are onto their next thing, and also I don’t want them to leave. It’s what gives birth to something new. And of course, birth is joyful and painful.
This summer, I spent a whole day pacing around the house before I realized that I was pacing around the house and my foot started aching. Our daughter had just moved home from college after graduation and she commented that we had too many things we don’t use in our house, too much clutter. It was annoying to hear that, but later when she left for work, I looked around. Pictures of the two kids as babies and toddlers were displayed on the piano. I had stacked books that I hadn’t yet committed to reading on the table by the sofa. An entire shelf of DVDs stood on the other wall. Some of the DVD titles included Harry Potter and Thomas the Train. Then my husband uncovered a bin in the basement with hot wheels and Nerf footballs. And then I had to consider the stacks of my journals from the Eighties. My daughter is right. It’s time to empty out.
Our daughter is an accomplished classical and electric guitarist as well as a composer. She has learned how to produce successful music shows. She’s also a great DJ and meme maker and is really funny too. And there are only a handful of things that equal the joy of hearing her play guitar and sing.
I remember when she was afraid and anxious as a child and sucked her thumb. I couldn’t reach or comfort her sometimes. It was hard for her to sleep so she read all the Harry Potter books pretty early on. I wanted so badly to read and experience them with her. I think we tried reading together, but I was so tired all the time that I would fall asleep. I was a pretty busy mom, busy in a social justice movement. I have so much guilt about how busy I was. And she helped me change. She called me out on it a couple times. She always stands up for what she needs. I appreciate that so much now. Maybe I taught her by not always making her the center of everything. But there’s still a little guilt. And that’s why my mind is racing back in time.
Our son is a filmmaker, visual artist, inventor, and thinker. I call him my life coach and I’m serious about that. I cherish his insights and wisdom on a daily basis. He texted me the other day when I was starting school again, “Have a good time at work. Remember to be aware of how it affects you.” He teaches me to stand up for and also create what I need. I worry about him getting lost in his ideas and being isolated from others. But then I remember that he’s my life coach and he is completely aware of the negative potential of his tendencies.
When he was a toddler, he was pretty much bald but had the quintessential “mad professor” tufts of light brown hair and also a unibrow. Our daughter and her friend would chase after him chanting, “Old Master. Old Master. Answer our questions”! And he definitely loved that! We had a picture on our fridge for a while from that era of him sitting in a rocking chair, high forehead, stone-faced and stoic, ready to receive questions and provide the wise-old responses.
As parents, we spent our time building the nest, twig by twig, with a whole lot of support from our own parents. We put so much energy into our children. And even when we stretched ourselves to the bone, even when we overstretched and overstressed, everything we did, in our minds, was for them and their futures. Within the nest, we held and nurtured our babies. We’ve kept them safe. We’ve fed and clothed them, made sure they had shoes that fit, that they got enough sleep, and we got them to school every day. We’ve taught them to question things and to care deeply about the world and their place in it. We’ve asked them where they are going and when they’ll be back. And now, all of a sudden, it’s time for them to go.
But our kids are becoming protagonists of their own lives. They will get to make a whole lot of decisions on their own. They will have wonderful and terrible experiences. They will be responsible for keeping themselves safe from harm. They will have to figure things out on their own. Maybe they’ll call to get our input, maybe not.
I wince a little bit when I hear the term empty nest. Our lives are far from empty. But how will we deal with missing them? I know our fifteen-year-old orange Maine Coon cat will surely get more love. And also, we had such little time together without our kids, that we are excited about all the things we can do together as a couple. Just as they are beginning the next chapter in their lives, so are we.
And our space doesn’t yet reflect this change. During my month off for summer, these thoughts turned into afternoon daydreams. I didn’t tackle the extraneous items in the living room or update the pictures on display. Instead, I paced from room to room, scrutinizing the paint colors, the light, the bedclothes, stretching out on their respective beds as if to soak up their presence and consider what their absence would feel like. (I know. Creepy mom. I only did that once.) I am wondering what this new nest will look and feel like for us without them. Maybe some people go through these transitions without so much drama and confusion. I don’t know. But this will take some time for me to adjust.
My husband and I joke about running our kids’ movies and performances on an auto loop. That way we’ll always hear their music, their younger faces, and their voices as they changed. But of course, that would be weird. And that will ensure that we’ll be stuck in the past and that they’ll never visit.
Plus, we have lots of things we want to do and we don’t have time to waste.
Every morning I’m stretching out my feet, legs, spine, and arms with downward dogs, and the pain in my foot is almost gone. I know we’ll be ok if we just take a cue and a clue from our kids. Our kids are both creators and innovators. One with music and the other with ideas. They create unabashedly. They transform unapologetically. They let go over and over again. We love them so much and we let them go knowing we’ll be overjoyed again and again when they come back.
Wendy Lea Writing 