Mid-Life: the Empty Nest

All around me, friends far and near are sending their kids off to college. We did it with our daughter seven years ago, and we'll be doing it again next year--our son is a senior in high school this year. It's a well-known stage of parenting, just like potty-training, PTA, and surviving The Talk (the birds and the bees one).

It's not an easy thing to do, even if you're ready--and we were; there's nothing like spending a year with a 17-year-old girl to convince you that you're ready for her to move out.  And she was more than ready. We have plenty of other things in our lives to keep us busy and happy and entertained. But it was still like lopping off my left arm and driving away.

The first six weeks I missed her constantly. I had plenty to keep me busy. I've never based my self-worth on being a mom. I was definitely not a helicopter mom. But I missed her. I missed her presence in the house.

And since I was for the first time in a very long time the only female in the house, I missed having another girl around. Boys--or at least my boys, adult and child-- don't chat. They don't re-hash their day or tell you the gossip of what's going on with their friends or want to know what you're thinking about. They don't light up with joy when you say, "I think we need some retail therapy."

But it got better. I got to visit her that October, and it helped considerably to see how happy she was and how well she was doing. It's hard not to be happy when your child is happy. She moved home for a year between college and her graduate studies, but for the most part she's been gone for seven years now. You don't raise them to stay home forever.

Our experience with sending her off to college was the typical, expected one. But I know lots of people who have done it differently: their child stayed home and went to community college, their child went off to college and ended up coming back, their child was so happy to be done with high school that they will never voluntarily darken the door of a classroom again.

We have friends with married kids and grandkids, friends with estranged kids, friends whose kids are struggling with substance abuse and unemployment and chronic illness or depression.

I was thinking the other day that we--all of us who are dealing with grown children-- seem to be less judgmental about other families' choices this time around. When our kids were small, I could get way up on a soapbox about potty training or the foods my child was eating at someone else's house or how another family was handling homework.

But few of us have made it through eighteen+ years of parenting without experiencing some epic fails. I hope I'm a bit more supportive of all my friends' choices these days.

Although you'll probably have to hold my hand next year when I get to the real empty nest. You've been warned.