The 19-year old boy-man is coming home for summer break, his first substantial period under our roof since leaving for college in August of 2010, and this event is both something to ponder and celebrate. What used to be a given — his being a daily part of family life — is now a novelty. A delightful novelty, but a novelty nonetheless. As the woman who birthed the boy, I am left to muse: how on earth did that happen?
I remain unconvinced that growing up and leaving home is just a required part of the program. In my own case it certainly was but in his… well, somehow it strikes me differently. I’ve always felt if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and we had a pretty unbroken thing going. He was a delightful companion, a relatively responsible roommate (though I admit the early years with the diapers and spoon feedings were a tad one-sided); a stellar entertainer, and quite the flexible traveler. There were tantrums, I admit, occasional lapses in academic devotion, and the limited food palate could be a challenge, but he was never incorrigible, and he generally thought we adults were cool. He was like living with your best friend through the various stages of your best friend’s life right down to the moment he figured out HTML and could build your website — then it just seemed silly to let him go.
But OK, fine. Growing up is mandatory. I get it; I applaud it even, and do find this grown child of mine as captivating as the two-year-old. Which prompts another twist: I still want to hang out with the two-year-old — and the seven-, ten- and 13-year-olds — while I’m living in present-time with the 19-year-old (imagine that scenario: the adult child wrangling his younger selves while I make grilled cheese and chatter happily with my gaggle of time travelers!). Since this option is not offered, the bigger conundrum becomes the current child’s step-by-step and apparently inevitable departure from home. From where he sits, leaving home was and is an exciting, open-ended adventure to the rest of his life. From my perspective, it’s as if my job description suddenly hit planned obsolescence and, like that aging salesman who’s walked gently to the door with a gold watch in hand, I’m unclear of my relevance in this new era of child development. Empty ‘Next’ Syndrome.
But life is a constant work in progress and I’m leaning into the phase. The truly painful early months post his departure were followed by eventual, if begrudging, acceptance and early-stage construction of a new life formed around the childless home. It’s a good life. I’m busy and creative and often find the freedom exhilarating. I have more time to myself, more time with my husband, the house is neater, and I don’t have to make school lunches every night. I find true pleasure in knowing how happy he is and how well he’s doing in school. Yes, there were the sometimes-awkward campus visits when he sweetly made time despite his clear preference to be with friends; the less awkward visits home when he simply was with his friends. I see him try to find the balance between being a considerate son and one who’s rushing inexorably toward the pull of independence. And as much as I cringe at being seen as any kind of obligation, I’m touched that he’s aware there’s a balance to be found. It’s all new territory and the scriptless nature of it will continue into our first summer break.
And what will that be? Will it feel like he’s just visiting for longer than usual between semesters, or like he actually still lives at home and just goes away to school from time to time? I want to believe the latter. I’m pretty sure it’s the former.
As we edge closer to this second chapter of Empty Nest, what’s coming into view is the reality that once the child leaves home for that first school year away, nothing is ever quite the same. We will get into familiar rhythms of dinner around a good movie, card games at the table, hikes down to the jetty, meals and plans and trips together, and it will be wonderful and I will cherish every moment. But unlike before — when this was just OUR LIFE, when time stretched before us so wide and open and whatever happened today might happen again tomorrow and we didn’t need to talk about it or look too far ahead because it was just there, unfolding naturally every day; Family. Mother, Father, Son — what it is now is… I don’t know. I’m not sure. We’ll see. Send suggestions.
Because that’s the chapter we’re on. Transitions. Coming back, leaving. Coming back, maybe for a shorter period, then leaving again. Coming back perhaps briefly, then leaving… maybe for good. It’s the damn circle of life and while we gather ’round Pride Rock and sing in celebration of growth and change and finding our way on the path unwinding, it hurts like a mother to let go of this child.
Here’s a question that was posed to me the other day by someone who meant well (and clearly hadn’t read Part 1), but hadn’t been down this road to know the quirks: “Whaddaya want? You want your son to stay at home the rest of his life, live in his room; never leave, always hanging on to you and his Dad?” Um…kind of? NO… hell, no! Stupid question. Reread my paragraph about wanting him simultaneously at all ages of his life and you’ll get what I want, mister.
What I want to happen is exactly what is happening. I want him to embrace his adulthood; slowly unfolding his passions to discover who he is and what he wants to do with his life. I want him to have an absolute blast in college (within parameters, of course!), do well by his academics, and learn a thing or two in the process. I want him to make great friends he’ll hopefully have for the rest of his life. I want him to continue to discover the wonders of love, taking the lovely manners he’s modeled from his father to always be the loyal, considerate, honorable boyfriend he already is. I want him to be an optimist, an activist, a person who isn’t afraid to stand up and speak out against injustice. I want him to find meaningful work that allows him to make a living doing something he loves. I want him to stay healthy, humorous, honest, and humble. (The 4-H’s. There are other letters but I liked the ring of those!) Basically, I want him to continue on his course of growing up, which he is doing spectacularly.
And yet… I still want my boy. The paradox of motherhood, yes?
Books and articles and other mothers tell me I will always be needed, will always be somewhere on his radar. I believe that. I trust that my son will be a good adult son. He’s already a good almost-adult son, and that he’s doing even with the distractions of college, love, and his first year of independent living. He seems to understand the paradox and finds ways to bridge the gaps: he set us up to play Internet Scrabble, allowing him to literally (as in words) kick my ass daily; we’re Facebook friends, he texts whenever there’s something of note to report, and he actually sounds happy to hear from me when I call. And though he’s not great at returning emails and we sometimes go too long between conversations, he still tells me, “we’re best friends, Mom.” I’m counting on it, sweetheart.
He’ll be home in a few days for three months. It feels like a glorious lifetime of time. I plan to use it well. We’ll all use it well. And when it’s over, I know it won’t be as painful as the last time he said good-bye. Empty Next. We will stumble on through, figuring it out; it’ll get easier.
Cue the singing wildebeest….
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To read the entire Empty Nest series, click links below:
• Empty Nest Pt 1: My Very Cool Roommate Is Moving Out…
• Empty Nest Pt 2: Empty ‘Next’ Syndrome…Coming Home
• Empty Nest Pt. 3: See You In November!
* Empty Nest Pt. 4: He’s Leaving Home AGAIN… Bye Bye
* Empty Nest Pt. 5: It’s a Wrap… Well, Almost
* Empty Nest Pt. 6: the Final Chapter: With Keys In Hand, He Flies…
* Empty Nest, EPILOGUE: He’s Getting Married in the Morning
All photos courtesy of Lorraine Devon Wilke
Visit www.lorrainedevonwilke.com for details and links to LDW’s books, music, photography, and articles.
to, once again, face the tortuous and inevitable death of our God’s Son (a sensitive youngster, this just cyclically broke my heart). I found all the suffering quite ponderous and from the more self-absorbed angle, Lent’s required deprivation (I typically gave up chocolate and some favored activity) felt punitive, my self-pity lessened only by the guilt induced when Mother would holler that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, I could “at least give up candy, for God’s sake!” Yes. I could. For God’s sake.
beyond copious ironing of new Easter finery and an enormous amount of high-tension prep for the baskets yet to be filled. When I was very young this was obviously done by my parents, though we were assured the quite capable Easter Bunny accomplished the basket task while we were sleeping (odd how E. Bunny and Santa followed the same playbook!). When I got older (Bunny fantasies dashed and reality clear on the horizon), I was relegated, as one of the “three big girls,” to join the assembly line in the secret room upstairs to help crank out those baskets, an assignment I actually enjoyed with its aesthetic demands of proper basket assemblage and easy access to jelly beans and the forbidden chocolate (one day away, what did it matter?). If you’ve never seen the voluptuous beauty of twelve well-stocked Easter baskets (eleven kids and a big one for Mom and Dad) lined up on a table waiting for distribution to clever hiding places around the house, you have missed a seminal secular holiday experience on a grand scale.
his wrong. Given the late hour and the proximity to Easter, all he could find were stuffed pigs and so he made the executive decision to bring them home. Though my mother was seriously horrified by this epic blunder, we loved our Easter pigs and it’s a story well told whenever speaking of family Easters!).
further as an adult, he surely can.
Well …
Marriage does not need defending. If your marriage does, I feel for you and suspect your problems lie much deeper than whether or not gay couples can marry. I would also guess that most who feel that marriage needs defending have never really known, been close to, or witnessed the bonds of devoted, monogamous gay or lesbian couples and their families. I have. Many. My son grew up surrounded by deeply committed gay couples who remain a part of our family of friends. My son is also a heterosexual who evolved with an inclusive, compassionate heart and I believe he and his generation will do much to bring this country to a brighter, less divisive reality.
expense! Though it depicts an in-house industrial rather than a 1983 version of an Apple commercial, it remains a hilariously dated snapshot of another, seemingly very distant, era in computer history.
could not produce. With the Disney project my vocal was predominantly used on the theme song of the movie but I at least got union wages, credit as a “singer,” and residuals for years after. The TV actress? She never knew I stood in a vocal booth for hours, sweating to create the necessary vocal affectation to sound like her but in-pitch. No one knew except the recording engineer and the music director. I was paid cash, shook on an NDA, received no credit and later, while catering an event for the very TV show on which she was a star, found irony inescapable when she rudely snapped at me while ordering her drink, huddled with friends jabbering on about her soon-to-be released movie. True story.
As for the parents, critics, bloggers, pundits and columnists who find themselves equivocating here and there about Miz Chua, I must question their own philosophy of parenting. To use one of Miz Chua’s words, don’t be lazy, people. It’s one thing to view something retrospectively and make judgments about the ultimate outcome in hindsight but go a little deeper. Forget for a moment the pictures of those smiling older girls standing with their smiling mother, all love and no regrets and she made me who I am today. Go back in time and put yourself in that room with Miz Chua and her sweet-faced seven year old daughter sitting at the piano, repeatedly pounding out “The Little White Donkey” and picture this scene: “I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts. Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it.”
came away with the crystal-clear understanding that abuse will always be abuse and it’s a chicken-shit way to achieve your goals. It may elicit the desired result and there may later be smiling all around, but not too far below the surface, conscious or sub, will lie anger, resentment, rage, and a profound sense of negation. A disassociative response is not uncommon and I question the smiles and nods of Chua’s two girls, wondering if therapy will be in their future once the Tiger has finally unhooked her claws and they experience enough of life without her to take stock of the damage. God, I hope so…it would be better than continuing to believe they deserved that kind of heinous parenting.
At the heart of this debate lies two questions: what do you think a child is and what is your role and goal as a parent? If you believe a child is a blank, malleable entity whose identity is at the mercy of your view of what they should be, and your paramount, non-negotiable goal as a parent is to crank out someone who has been molded and shaped to be THE BEST AT ALL COSTS, well, Amy Chua’s prescription of long-term, unremitting, soul-crushing abuse as motivation may be the way to go. It worked for her and apparently many other Chinese families and, come on, just look at those test scores!
But if you believe a parent is a sacred and in some ways temporary role, a precious conduit designed to facilitate the bringing into the world of a bright individual whose destiny — with your loving care and guidance – is to find their passion, their voice, their truest self and, most importantly, evolve with a wholeness of spirit, a desire to learn and accomplish, and the unequivocal urge to be the most honorable, compassionate, and meaningful version of themselves, put the book down. You won’t find the answers there.
But good parenting is a wonder.
We Americans love our guns. Love ‘em. We don’t just feel they’re a Right, a necessity, a possibly delusional buffer from harm; we’re freakin’ PASSIONATE about the things. We kick and scream in protest for them, demand the freedom to buy as many as we can, resist all attempts to regulate them; hell, we’d marry them if we could but that would trigger (no pun intended) the anti-gun-marrying lobby and that’s a whole other argument.
I remember when my son was about three and pretty much everything in life was a contest. Drinking juice, brushing teeth, eating an ice cream cone; he compulsively gauged his success by whether or not he got to the goal “first.” First to finish, first to spit out his toothpaste, first to crunch that cone; whatever the task, he’d puff up and holler, “I won, I’m first!” (I routinely abdicated, refusing to rush my dental hygiene or the slow enjoyment of a Häagen-Daz.) It was important to him, though, being first. Being best. Winning the prize. Cute at three and it’s a human urge, certainly, (think DWTS or American Idol) but without wisdom and humility it’s just juvenile. And this generational battle being debated in the media smacks of the same.
First of all, they’re younger. And younger, by its very nature, means self-confident, self-focused, certainly thinner and with better skin. Regardless of which Gen we’re talking about, which sub-group of which Gen, they’re typically fixated on something youngish. Anything from getting famous, being hot, graduating college, getting jobs, designing software, starting foundations and pursuing extreme sports, to planning a wedding, buying their first condo, making babies, passing the bar, getting careers established and staying abreast of smart technology. They’re doing whatever it is people do at whatever stage of life they’re in. Why on earth does anyone think would they give a rat’s…well, care at all about being compared to Boomers who are all pretty much just…old? Trust me, THEY DON’T. They’re not even paying attention.
Consider our growing acceptance of those aforementioned taut, plastic faces, fat-injected cheeks and frightfully puffed up lips, a look so ubiquitous these days that children must think older people are simply tightly-wound and oddly unattractive replicants of younger people. How terrifying that must be! When I was growing up, the lined, sagging, utterly human face of my beloved Grandmother with her ample (and authentic) bosom and soft bread-dough arms comforted and charmed me. I wanted to bake like her, travel the world like her; be capable like her. I loved her embroidery skills and her indefatigable sense of adventure, flying after her to climb the steps of the clackety Chicago El to cross town in search of empty lots of dandelion greens and good deals at outlying department stores. She was magical and inexhaustible and I made no judgment of her based on her soft, aging body…and this was when she was not much older than the tight, taut, oh so shiny Miz Smith!
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