Semi-Empty Nest...

Well, both my kids are gone.  One into the Navy and the other off to work with kids and horses.  The later is just gone for the next six weeks.  I still have my bonus son here, thankfully.  But this time without my daughter has made me realize that someday, in the not so distant future, I will live alone.  I haven’t lived alone since 2002.

Time alone gives you time to reflect on your parenting.  All the places you zigged instead of zagged.  All the ways you failed as a parent, and all the ways you killed it.  I guess what is coming up for me the most is how much I enjoyed the process.  It was so hard.  So fucking hard, every day.  My parenting road was long and arduous but looking back, momnesia takes over and I can only remember all the good things.

I am grateful I got to experience what it is like to completely devote yourself to these little beings.  I am so grateful I was here every day, even the days that I didn’t want to be and wished that my custody schedule was something other than what I had.  My daughter being gone for the next six weeks is the double the time we have ever been apart from each other.  And she is 18.  So in 18 years I have only been away from her for 3 weeks time.  And that was just a few months ago.  As someone who is not the best with staying with things, I am grateful motherhood was one of the things that stuck.  I mean, just because you are a mom doesn’t mean that you enjoy it or that you are happy to do it.

I was not the best mom always.  I think I was an adequate mom punctuated with times of greatness.  Regardless of whether my non-objective review of myself and my parenting is accurate, I know that I showed up every day and I never gave up.  And while that seems like it might be a low bar for motherhood, if you think that it is likely because you have never been a mom.

I cared way too much about things and didn’t play with them enough.  I yelled when tired and hungry and was not my best self.  I had some traumas that I should have worked out sooner, before their arrivals, that would have made all of our journeys easier and more pleasant.  Unfortunately I didn’t know I had the trauma until they arrived.

As we transition into a new world order, one where they are free agents and begin their own lives, I can see this transition I somewhat longed for is bittersweet.  I miss my daughter terribly and she left on Monday.  It hasn’t even been 48 hours.  (Insert eye roll here).  

I guess this is what parenting is: a constant and never ending shifting of needs and responsibilities.  Just when you think you have the hang of it, you realize that you in fact do not.  There is always something new being asked of you.  Always something new required.  Parenting is the one thing I have been consistently bad at but also did a pretty good job overall.  If I performed at work the way I have parented, I would probably have gotten fired.  And while I do have regrets, I know how lucky I am to have gotten to be there for these not so tiny anymore humans.  They are good people.  They know right from wrong.  They are funny which likely means they have enough trauma to make them so.

I love the tidiness of the house.  I love the order and the quiet.  But I can see the pervasive loneliness that sits on my couch and mocks me when I come through the door and they are not stationed in their spots in the living room.  It is exquisitely painful.

And this is one of those moments where there is nothing to be done.  Nothing it wrong or needs to be fixed, it is just how life is supposed to go.  You are supposed to show up and parent and do your best and then from the moment you find out you are going to be a parent, you have to begin to let go of your way, your ideas, and them.

This is just another acute release.  And we have survived many.  I guess I just didn’t expect it to bother me so much and that it would take less than 3 days for me to want her back immediately.  Thank God Riley is still here.  I would just be vacant and more lost if he was not.

I know time will pass and I will rue the day I missed her when she leaves all her shit in the kitchen and I release the kraken.  I know this is just the first of her self propelled flights into her new life.  I know this is just the beginning of a new beginning and the end to how we have done life for the past 18 years.  It is all changing and it will be good and it will hurt.

I think I entered motherhood completely unprepared.  And I think, for the most part, that was a blessing. If I knew what would be asked of me, how much it would hurt and drain and kill me in not so tiny ways, I think I would have skipped it.  And I would have totally missed out.  The joy, love and blessings I have felt were worth all the problems, calamities and hardship.  Every single day.

I am going to try to enjoy my semi-empty nest.  I am going to try to be present and just feel all the feelings that are generated by my now adult children and their moves about the world.  I guess as we stand on this new precipice, I am grateful for all we endured, all we loved and all we accomplished together as mother and children.  And I look forward to what comes next for us all. Knowing there will be amazing blessings and some pain too.  That is just how life is and so too is the fine art of mothering.

Again, still...

Sunny, one of two bald eagle chicks from Big Bear taking her first flight...