First off, the best way to delay the consideration of what an empty nest means is to go on vacation once you drop off your child at college! I highly recommend this, because much as a honeymoon is an opportunity to chill after many weeks of stressful anticipation of the big event, a get-away provides the same venue -- different scenery, different routine, etc. But, you do have to go home again!
The way I seem to be handling this almighty event is by being exhausted. I have not cried, I do not feel morose, I do not miss him desperately, but I am bone tired, no matter how much sleep I get. this morning, after a good 12 hours of sleep, I realized I was still riddled with exhaustion, which makes no sense because while we were away we got loads of sleep and hiked and had a great time ... unless of course you realize that no matter what type of super woman you think you are, you are STILL going to feel it in one form or another!
So I surrender, and am owning it, feeling it, trying it all on for size. Maddie is still here, but she just finished work after a long summer of very little time off, so she is decompressing via a puzzle. The weather is perfect ... gray and intermittent rain. Perfect, you might ask?!! Yeah, it just feels right. I am not in the mood for a bright, sunshiny day that makes me feel as though I need to be doing something other than what I am doing. I am honoring the transition, if you will. Understanding that my body is aching and tired because it has concluded an amazing journey, and now it seeks rest. Or maybe just affirmation, a pat on the back, if you will, for a job well done. I don't know ... my outlet, which is writing, is where I turn, and here I am. Just spitting out words and seeing what sentences they form!
Charlie is on Regimental Preparatory Training, which is yet another layer of the onion, in terms of one, you drop off your kid at school, that is big, you wave goodbye, and then you text and call. But in this case, all forms of communication (cell phones, laptops) were put into storage as of Sunday evening, and he is radio silent until next Sunday, when his RPT is celebrated with a jump off the ship. When you have a child who is resistant to authority (a DNA trait apparently, because I have that in spades) and who bristles at first, then grows angrier by the moment when someone tells him to DO something, it is a bit nerve wracking thinking of him being in this position for a solid week. And then the ensuing six weeks are more of the same, though we will be able to contact him, and vice versa. He didn't go into this blind; he knew what was in store for him, and he will come out of it with a newfound sense of confidence, of this I have no doubt.
I know how to let go, and I want to. I foresee his future to be amazing. He will travel the world, he will make amazing connections and friends, and I am happy for him. But I am, alas, far more human than I thought I was, or at the very least mature enough to recognize that we don't get through anything without a little pain if we are actually listening. And that is what I am doing ... I am listening to my heart, which is heavy, but my mind jumps from the gaping holes of no children around, to when they will be around. I jumped right into planning our Hawaii trip yesterday, as soon as we got home, because that is a concrete placeholder of pure family. A trip like nothing we have ever done before, over Christmas, in a tropical and beautiful setting.
As I sat on the balcony at the Bar Harbor Inn overlooking the ocean the past few days, there was a path that meandered the rocky shore right below me. All day long people would walk by, it was a cornucopia of different groups -- parents and young children, parents and slightly older children, parents with babies strapped to them, parents with teenagers, families with grandparents, couples of all ages, teenagers, old people ... all of humankind walked by and it felt, at times, like a trip through Vacation's Past. There we were, walking by, an older daughter, walking behind her younger siblings, vastly different in age, yet she somehow found joy in them. There we were, just two children, the oldest already gone ... and so on. I reflected on each stage, I remembered how hard it was to vacation with small children, the logistics, the equipment, the exhaustion. Maybe that is what I am experiencing! All that I held in all of those years is leaking out, bit by bit, shedding itself from my psyche ... at last, free to go jump on someone else!
I have no desire to go back, but my perspective has changed in that as I watched families go by with the grandparents in tow, I thought, yeah, that will be fun! And there is a good chance that I will have the opportunity to see what type of grandparent I will be in my 50's and then again in my 60s, as there is such a span between Hallie and Charlie (Maddie says she doesn't want kids. I tell her I used to say the same thing!) So I do look forward to a future with small children, but on a different playing field. And I look forward to seeing what type of parents my own kids become, and also, how will they treat their parents as we grow older? I keep telling them, as I have just spent a summer tending parents in the true spirit of the sandwich generation, that I am MODELING for them!
Let's hope they were watching!
