The kids come and the kids go and the kids come back again.
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Holliegrams are musings of my own take on local and world events, raising a family, relationships, health, aging, and community. They can be informative, inspiring, humourous, sad, thought-provoking, or just a pleasant way to begin your week.
This column was previously published in The Union Newspaper.
I spent part of my Sunday watching a Blue Jay build a nest off the eaves of my front porch. One tiny twig at a time, assembling a soft, safe cushion that will soon be home to eggs and to my husband’s dismay, more Blue Jay’s (they are noisy creatures.)
My own nest has been “empty” for about five months now. I know many people talk about the empty nest with nothing short of dread. I am not those people. I am, in fact, enjoying every minute of it, as I knew I would and I am working to insure the nest stays empty as the boomerang ( they leave, they come back, they leave, etc) trend seems to be growing all around me.
Don’t get me wrong – I cried for weeks before my son left for college – just mentioning the topic would send me over the edge – but once I moved him into his dorm at UCSB, I could not have been happier for him and moved my focus to those still at home. When I moved my daughter to Santa Cruz (for what turned out to be a boomerang false start), I cried all the way from the beach to San Jose.
The actual act of having them move on was emotional but in truth, I was already reallocating space in my house! The reality is that preparing our children to move away from us and teaching them to make their own way is not only a natural rite of passage, it is our duty as parents.
There is no question my children were raised with an ability and expectation to become independent self sufficient adults. That is in part due to necessity – with seven children we did not have the means to provide them with much in the way of assistance - but we did give them a strong sense of self. I have often joked with my kids that the biggest life skills they learned growing up in our house was how to live with people they didn’t necessarily like and how to get by on very little.
I jump for joy as much as for my children’s independence as I do for the opportunity I have to finally focus on myself and my marriage. Over the years any good parent will sacrifice their own wants and desires for those of their children. When friends would ask me to join them on trips abroad or to exotic spa weekends, I would think, “it’s not my yet my season, my time is coming.” And finally that time is here. I am rediscovering what it is like to actually be alone for hours at a time. I relish it. After decades of struggling to make ends meet, there is finally a little extra - enough to replace the worn sofa and to plan for a “real” vacation. And most importantly, I am able to rediscover the man who has shared it all.
I read somewhere that women go through a life change or “crisis” about every seven years. I have been married to Ernie for 14 years so he has already survived two of such crises and I can look back and identify them both. There is the “is this all there is” crisis when between parenting and work, it appeared there was no time or resources for either of us and the “good thing I hate to pack” crisis when I could no longer recognize the person I had become and wondered what I was thinking making a life with someone else – it had nothing to do with him, but again came back to this is not the life I had imagined for myself and I was not certain how I got here. Luckily we weathered them both and are committed to working through the next one, which accordingly to my calculations may be starting later this year!
Graduation is only a few weeks away and many tearful moms and dads will be saying goodbye to the life they have created and the only world they have known for at least the last eighteen years. My advice is to embrace what is next and let “what is next” be about you.
If you are lucky enough to have survived the challenges of parenting intact, and you still like the person you see sitting next to you, you are one lucky duck. While springtime is nest building time if you are a bird, empty nesting is your chance to reclaim your sense of self . Embrace choice. It’s your season.