Monday, 7:30 p.m. The sky is burnished in the west, dark orange sun falling behind gray-blue clouds. The Canadian wildfire smoke is gone (for now) and the trees are not yet hinting at the end of summer. We have had plenty of rain these past three months, so much so that the strip of shadeless grass that forms a diagonal across the front lawn has remained the emerald green it was at the beginning of spring. And yet, I know that soon, all of this will start to fade, and the glowing greens of the grass and leaves, and the bright hues of the flowers will fade to brown, then gray. It’s time to start thinking about school.
This year, school is different for me. This year, my last child and first college student has gone away. She is at a university thirty minutes to the south, yet it feels as if she could be a thousand miles away.
I didn’t think I would feel this way. I realize that my youngest child, who sometimes made me feel as if she were raising herself amid the busy weekdays, activity-filled evenings, and packed weekends, seemed to grow up the quickest. I never thought the old saying “the days are long but the years are short” would apply to me. Until it did. That child that came along when I was well into my 40s is grown up, an adult of her own. She is eager to see the world, yet a bit timid to be leaving the nest, the only home she has ever known. And I am eager as well, to see her new world through the new stories she will have to tell, the next struggles and successes, heartbreaks, and losses.
But I am just as timid; my newfound free time could become loneliness. The empty nest syndrome looms like a virus on the brink of invasion. What will the first weeks and months be like, not having to come home and cook, or drive to an activity, or write on a big calendar in different colors to keep all our schedules straight? Perhaps it will give me a new sense of belonging, but to which group? The one whose mantra is “I’ve raised all of my kids, and I love the freedom” or to the one whose mantra is “where did the time go? How I miss them! When are the grandchildren coming along?”
Either way, in my heart, I feel that this is the beginning of the next best chapter of my life. I look forward to that first time I hear from her with her newfound stories. Even if I have a tear or two in my eyes…
margaret.r.zotkiewicz 