My youngest daughter just went off to college. It has a familiar feel – boxes stacked in the dorm room; her roommate’s duffle bag tossed on the opposite bed. Two desks. I look around, taking it in. This will be her home, but I won’t be part of it. The best I can hope for are isolated glimpses scattered throughout the year. Her new friends, her professors, academics and her daily experiences will be hurried summaries over the phone.
Life will be different now. At dinner there is no one left to ask, “So, how was school today?” No more bedtime stories. No more school plays. No more choir concerts. No more soccer games, no more volleyball tournaments, no more basketball with squeaking sneakers and whistles as background noise, no more helping with homework, no more teacher conferences.
It's a new world a bornin’, a six-year weaning process. Three Freshman dorms, three new schools and three good-byes. Life takes on a new cast. We no longer buy huge jars of mayonnaise and peanut-butter. The house is not an ongoing mess. Garbage accumulates slowly. The van no longer has a permanent layer of crumbs and long-dead fries. (Do we even need a van now?) Their rooms are quiet, frozen in time. Nothing is out of place; nothing moves.
Actually, the weaning process has been going on for years. When they were little, our world’s intersected. They went where we went; they did what we did. But the moment they went off to school, our lives diverged. Yes, we visited the classrooms at open house, but most of school was closed to us. Their experiences were their own.
Every year their horizons widened. “Can I go to Molly’s for a sleepover?” Mandy asks. “Meghan and I are going to the mall,” Ashlie informs us. I drop Melanie off at the junior high dance. I watch her disappear through the dangling crepe paper into the clattering din where an unknown country awaits. I’d like to slip in to watch her, but the door to the gym might as well be a mile high and a mile thick. If I show-up at the dance the coroner will report:
Middle Schooler Dies from Embarrassment
“We need to go away for a weekend to absorb it all,” my wife said. “I have a need to think about the girls and understand what it all means. Were they ever so small and dependent?” They were but have been magically transformed.
When they were infants and toddlers, they craved hugs and love. We were their gods: all knowing, all powerful, physically overwhelming, dispensing food and love as only gods can. They gradually realized that the gods were flawed. Gods don’t make mistakes; gods can’t make colds go away or make the rain stop; gods can’t help with calculus homework. As soon as they see they can defy the gods, NO becomes their power source. Do you want to play? NO! Do you want to read a story? NO! Do you want ice cream? NO! Gotchya. And gods can be fooled like the time Ashlie told us she was at the bowling alley but was really at Sara’s…with boys.
Fifteen years ago, when we were in the thick of things, our most precious commodity was time. Like a paycheck that disappears into rent, car payments and medical insurance, time was spent the moment it appeared. Chauffeuring to soccer games, helping with homework, breaking-up fights and stories at bedtime, consumed the moments of our lives. Babysitters were a gift from the Heavens, allowing us to steal away for dinner and a movie, while we fretted the whole time, hoping everything was all right at home.
Now we have time. The house is still. Their lives are so far away that much of what they do comes to us as vague impressions: friends we’ve never met, places we’ve never seen, glimpses of relationships. It’s like reading a novel – all we can do is visualize what they are doing. Texas, Wyoming and Washington State are their new homes. If the junior high dance was a wall, we are now separated by a mountain.
Some people have trouble adjusting to the empty nest. They get divorced, they try new hobbies, they travel; the television becomes their electronic friend, they buy pets, they have change-of-life-babies. Ah, to be needed again. Well, some may say that, but we are not among them. While there is poignancy in their empty rooms, there is also freedom – more money, greater mobility, more flexibility. It’s party time for mom and dad. But sometimes, when I have too much time to think, I wonder at the miracle of it all: how there was a time when they didn’t exist, how they popped into the world from nowhere, pinched, wet and screaming; how they grew big and disappeared, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
This piece was written around 2002; I never sent it in for publication and don’t remember why.
Ah, but now all these years later, do you how how you feel about it all?
Our youngest went off to college in 2005. The transition was hard for me but I was still working and that , along with caring for my elderly parent, gave me purpose. Health issues led to an earlier retirement than expected and I floundered for - literally - several years. But then grandchildren came along and the desire/need to provide child care took over my life. These days I spend about 40 hours a week caring for two three year olds.
I appreciate the poignancy in the piece. We are young and full of plans, dreams, and all that. Then life turns into the busy-ness of making those plans / dreamd / goals happen. And the years just slip by so quickly. On the other side of the dreams, one wonders about it all. That's maybe all you can do, eh? Wonder and appreicate the gift that is life.
I think you missed your calling! This had me laughing and dewy eyed at the same time. What a wonderfully written piece that everyone who has been a child of loving parents, have their own children to tend to, or are at any stage of the empty nest syndrome can relate to.