This is a topic I have been avoiding. Simply, the empty nest is painful, yet also – stretching, growing, and even hopeful.
There is much to write about the phenomenon of one’s children growing up and leaving home, depending on your experience. And I’m aware that my perspective is only one side of a multi-faceted outlook.
For a mom, it always seems hard. We moms have been right by their side since birth, for first steps, first lost teeth, first-day-of-school pictures, teaching them how to ride a bike, making their favorite meal, planning birthday parties. Trying to take pictures or get someone else to take them as you carry the candled cake to the table, because inside you know how fast it’s all going. People tell you, “One day, the house will be silent, and you will miss the sounds, the mess, the fingerprints on the sliding door, all the drawings under magnets on the fridge.” Yes, yes, I know, you say. But you don’t really know. Silence, clean floors and a good night’s sleep are unimaginable luxuries, still enrobed in sublime light somewhere in a galaxy far, far away.
Hearing small feet running down the hallway, toddler hollers from their crib in the morning, warm little hugs and breakfast mess and laughs and shrieks from the trampoline outside. Memories pile on top of each other like unfolded laundry. If only you had truly had time to soak in all of those moments, and not been distracted by the phone, the bills, obligations, appointments, making supper, keeping up with your job. But you did try. There were many times I put everything down and simply watched, listened, tried to capture the presence of my children in whatever they were doing. Peeking around a corner to see them reading in their room, or playing with My Little Ponies, making forts, assembling Lego houses, having conversations with stuffed animals, jumping in piles of leaves. I knew those were beautiful moments and wanted to hold on, to freeze them in my mind’s eye. I’m glad I did.
Perhaps I was distinctly aware of how poignant these moments were because of leaving my smaller sisters and brothers so early. My first year at a bible college 1000 miles away was marked by a deep and constant feeling of sadness. I missed my siblings, particularly the youngest ones who I had spent so much time with, but all of them really. I couldn’t put my finger on it for awhile, but looking back I was terribly, inconsolably homesick. My brothers and sisters were my friends, my confidants. Later, the loss hit me sharply — realizing that they had all carried on with life, had grown older, taller and wiser and didn’t need me, had other interests, other friends. And that was good. I had left, after all. They were too young to understand. I think remembering how fast they grew up taught me to be mindful, to capture moments. To pay attention and enjoy.
Though my young adult kids have both left home for months and years at a time, this past year was the first one where they were both gone, with no plans of returning. Oh, the door is always open, but I know the best place for them isn’t under my roof. Of course I would love it, and still absolutely adore having them visit, imagining the “good old days” with us all around the table again.
I feel a sense of purpose making them food, talking, fixing something, giving a little advice. Just hearing them around the house or seeing their shoes by the door is wonderful. But, I know it is better for them to be out there, struggling to make their own space and way in the world. A healthy relationship does not try to override, smother, manipulate or control. The best scenario for our children is to become like oak trees, strong and deeply rooted, separate, able to provide shade and care for themselves and others. An unhealthy parent-child relationship is more like a strawberry plant, with shallow roots, staying alive by runners connected to the strength of the main plant. Strawberries are sweet and wonderful, but one doesn’t stand under them in the heat of the day.
As much as I miss them, if I truly love my kids I will want them to be strong on their own. Of course even an oak tree begins as a sapling and needs watering, sunlight, good soil and some careful nurture to get growing. (And we all have different family situations – I’m speaking in general terms.) I can’t let my own insecure need of wanting to be important or necessary in their life take precedence, constantly pulling them back to the nest. The best thing I can do now is take care of my own branches. What needs to be pruned, or watered? Is there some unhealthy rot I can address? I’m realizing that this is the essential work of the empty nest.
It is okay to take a minute and acknowledge life is different. I won’t stay here. Life is going on all around, and I need to catch up with it. But it is alright to feel the emptiness of this nest, right now, and reminisce about louder, messier, more chaotic days, where sweet children’s voices echoed. The thing with being human in this world is rising up to meet whatever comes, and the most important part is paying attention.
“Growing Up”
Silent hallways
Two plates, two forks
Couch with ample space for laundry
Not many coats hang by the door
Piano strings are still
Other children rush to lessons
Their parents hurry.
Oh, there are always kids to hold
But they are not my own
Their names not written on the wall
With feet and inches and the year
Their pictures do not line the mind
And skip around inside the heart
Time’s hands stopped ticking
and just fell right on the floor.
A baby cries and life begins
Keeps on going outside the doors
Wherever they are living
A golden thread that flows
For generations.
Stories for Humans 