When you become an empty nester you don't realize how drastically routines will change. How quiet your once boisterous house will be. How things will magically stay in the same place you left them. How the laundry doesn't need to be done every single day. How the grocery bill goes down. How making meals for two, instead of six, will cause a lot of leftovers until you get the portions adjusted accordingly.
But, mostly, how you will wonder how all those years flew by so fast.
I have been a stay at home mom and I have been a working mom. While I enjoyed both, the constant in both scenarios was that all of our kids were home with us. Schedules revolved around them and our days were incredibly busy. Because we have multiple kids, when one went away to college, we still had three at home and so on. Each was an adjustment but it was doable because we still had a semblance of our life as six remaining.
It's been nearly two years since our last child left for college. Ed and I are almost acclimated to the change. We have enjoyed getting to know each other again and have settled into our own routine. But even though the kids don't live with us full time anymore, our life still centers around them.
We plan weekends to go visit them at school. We plan ahead for Mom's weekend and Dad's weekend. We look forward to Spring Break and other holidays. I always find myself looking forward to those times when at least five of us can get together. If Braxton can come from St. Louis, too, it makes it perfect.
Having the kids home this weekend takes me right back to the days they were growing up. The glaring difference is that they are all adults now. Being an empty nester means when the kids do come back, they aren't your little babies anymore.
This has been the most challenging for me.
Ed does a much better job with the fact the kids are adults and make many of their own choices, without us, now. I am the Mom. Maybe it's harder for me because I have trouble seeing them as adults and not as the people I carried under my heart, my babies.
While we still discuss almost everything with our kids, I have come to realize I need to step back a bit. I am free with my opinion and am not sure I will change that, but I am trying to respect their decisions if they go against my feelings. We raised them to be responsible for their own choices and we need to trust in the type of people they are. They need to learn some things on their own and have their own successes and failures.
That's just life. It's how adults interact. It's a healthy part of any relationship.
Being an empty nester will always make me a little melancholy because the kids will never be my babies again. They will never rely completely on us. On me.
But being an empty nester is also a wonderful title to have. It means my relationships with my children are evolving and we each have to find the balance of love and respect as adults.
While I would make them all small again in a second, I embrace this empty nest. I will continue to enjoy the chaos that comes when they are home. It's familiar. It brings back memories of the best of times.
I know there are many more to come because my babies are all extraordinary people. I just need to go along for the ride and see where it takes me, where it takes our family of six adults.
It is what it is.
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