It is 9:30 on a beautiful, sunny morning and my daughter has just left for her internship, and in a few days, she will be starting her senior year of college. Our son is outside mowing the grass for us, one more time, before we take him back to campus for his junior year at university. The summer has flown by, full of nice memories, and I realize that tonight will be last night the four of us will be together at this time, at this place. Next spring when the school year ends, my children will be going off in different directions. For my daughter, it will be her graduation, the beginning of her career and a new location. For our son, a great research opportunity beckons. Summers will be quite different and our home will be quiet. All the years of activities and living together will be over in an instant. I am not sure how life changes so slowly, yet so quickly and suddenly, it is the next chapter.
I am very proud of the wonderful adults our children have grown into. I treasure how much time we actually have had and I am so excited for what life has in store for them. I am just wondering how their parents will survive.
For one thing, my husband and I are too young to retire, so we will continue to work, as we dust off the list of things we wanted to accomplish, before we had children. There are new regions of our marriage and life we want to explore and things we want to learn. For the first time, without the responsibilities of children and aging parents, the possibilities are endless. Also, for the first time, we can start to simplify life and pare down to the essentials. I like author Ruth Berkowitz’s idea in the Washington Post article, “Parents, prepare your empty-nest bucket list” (August 22, 2018) of our “spreading our wings”, as our children do, as they leave the nest. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2018/08/22/parents-prepare-your-empty-nest-bucket-lists/?utm_term=.a32491857213
What are your thoughts on your empty nest experience?
Leslie Fowler Doyle Communications 