Empty Nester’s Journey

Today, from my kitchen, comes “family”…no food, sorry. I want to begin by thanking you for joining me as we embark on this new journey in our life; the Empty Nester’s Journey. You’ve come at a very good time. The beginning! You will no doubt make my trek more palatable! So, again, thank you, thank you, thank you! Dom thanks you too!

I was recently watching So You Think You Can Dance, one of my many guilty pleasures… and the song, Can’t Help Falling in Love, came on. Oh man – monster train rumbled in…hissed and screeched to a halt…hung at the station for a short time (felt like an eternity)…then screeched and wailed away…

The song was performed in this feathery, flitty, soft, yet powerful voice and when she got to the line, “Take my hand, take my whole life too…” it was all I could do to stay in my chair, let alone keep from running straight out the front door…Really??? In that moment all I could visualize was each of my children’s tiny little hands holding mine, each of their tiny little souls taking my heart…and my whole life too…

Being a mom… Lauren, Chelsea and Nick’s mom, has given shape and meaning and direction to my life for over 23 years. What to do now? Now that we’re finished with the “dailies” of parenting, what do we do?

How do we adjust when our kids actually go off and live the lives we’ve raised them to?

You know, I tend to be one of these people who likes to begin with the end in mind…I imagine what I’d like to see before I even get my hands dirty – I will visualize a dish before cracking an egg, I visualized my landscape before planting my first day-lily, I envisioned what my relationships with my adult children could look like before they even took their first steps or said their first words.

I think there is a lot to be said for this. By visualizing the end result, we create a goal and a basic blueprint for getting there. It is easier to pick the right crayons when we have an idea of what we want the picture to look like when we’re finished coloring. Is it a straight shot from point A to point B? Definitely not. Is it easier to bring it back to center should we lose our way? Oh yes! Is it okay to color outside the lines a little bit? You bet!

 

 

OK….let’s see here, let’s just play for a minute…let’s pick a character trait (pick a trait, any trait…i.e. adventurous, courageous, grateful, etc… ) how about we go with kindness. Kindness was something we wished to see in each of our children as they matured. But we knew that we couldn’t just say a little prayer to the kindness gods and ask that they infuse them with kindness juice on the day that we’re fluffing pillows and hanging posters in their first year dorm room. We knew that from the beginning, without our modeling the behaviors, or holding ourselves to a standard, that it wouldn’t be fair to expect it of them. It was more likely we would see it in them if they had seen it in us…blueprint…(Ok, wait a minute…back to the fluffing of pillows and hanging of posters…what is it about needing to make up our child’s bed in their dorm room? I just cannot leave without my fingerprints all over it! And I know I am not alone…all we moms are walking around those cinder-block walled dormitories, sheets and pillowcases dragging behind us, looking like deer in headlights, feeling like this is our last grand domestic offering for our babies. This is a moment! And for those of you who have been there, you know what I’m talking about!)

So yeah, Empty Nester’s Journey…this is an adjustment, my friends. Every time I think “I got this”, that monster train rolls in when something I can’t imagine would phase me phases me.

The smell of suntan lotion, finding bobby pins in the dryer, discovering that missing lacrosse sock, feathery little flitty sounding songs…

So what do we do?

Nothing.

We don’t change a thing.

 

 

Ciao!