Tag: empty nest

Posted in Fathers, Fragile Life, Insight, Legacy, Milestone Moments, Mother to Crone, Nuts & Bolts, Round Two, Takes a Village, Teens, Twenty-something, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

“Someday” has arrived

Posted on by Kelly (and the Buck)


Our community came together one day in June to raise the frame of our home–along with 3-year-old Aidan who spent the day hammering nails into the floorboards of what would be our kitchen; and 8-year-old Lloyd who knelt beside his preschool & primary teachers laying down the floor to what would become his bedroom; and Casey, age 38, who lifted beams with friends & family (and even strangers) to realize a dream come true; and me, age 40, who never had the chance to live in one place very long and who climbed the frame at the end of the day and tapped an evergreen branch to its peak while everyone cheered below.

14 years have passed.
14 Christmases.
14 wedding anniversaries.
14 winters & springs.
14 summers.
14 autumns.

Over the years, Casey spoke of needing an addition—the living room was always too small; but I countered that the boys would be gone someday and the house was already too large for two.

“Someday” has somehow arrived.

What was “raised” to be a home for 4, becomes a home for 2 at the end of summer—which is almost as unfathomable as building this home for ur family once was.

Posted in College, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

Letting go like a dream, or labor, or swimming under water

Posted on by Kelly (and the Buck)

klimt-mother-and-childThough she could probably count the times she’d cried as an adult, she found herself randomly weeping throughout the entire college orientation weekend.

Shit, she thought. What did I get myself into?

She thought she was ahead of the game of loss given her advance work on the blog and the book entitled, The Empty(ing) Nest Diary (END). But there seemed to be no escaping any of it. It was a lot like labor in this way. Unpredictable. Chaotic. Tender. Remarkable. Excruciating.

By the second day, she began to feel that she was caught up in a bad dream. Her son’s impending absence was so thick around her heart, that she felt the need to hug him, but she couldn’t find him—not in the bookstore, or the meal tent, or in the lounge or  in the residence halls.

Once or twice she thought she spied him among the crowds, and she even ran toward him, only to discover that it was another handsome young man who did not belong to her.

When she crossed paths with his friends,  she had to restrain herself from embracing them, though she did over eagerly greet them with a desperate joy.

“Have you seen Lloyd?”she’d ask, trying be casual, as if she was just making conversation, not letting on that in fact she was caught in a nightmare where her son was just around the corner, but she’d never find him. Again.

When she finally did stumble upon him, the real him, on a tour, she hugged him. In public. In front of strangers. He didn’t seem to mind. Too much.

They would meet for lunch. She placed herself at the first table in the tent, facing the entrance so that she wouldn’t miss him; and still she looked behind herself every 10 minutes just in case she’d been distracted and missed him rushing by.

But he did eventually arrive, and even returned to her table once he found some lunch. It was a light meal and quick conversation and then he was off again with his friends.

Suddenly she realized that this is how it would be.

He would breeze in and breeze out of her days like breath after a long time underwater, and she would be both refreshed and emptied in the space she created inside to receive him.

She resented this. Because of her father.

Posted in Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

Dreaming Goodbyes

Posted on by Kelly (and the Buck)
(Jean Ryder)
Moses basket (image: Jean Ryder)

Cold Autumnal air invades my summer evenings, and I feel the chi drain from my body as if it were a tree.

Two nights in a row, I get into bed before 8 and sleep a dozen hours.

The following night my husband wakes me like a newborn, as he shuffles from our bed to the bathroom and back again, again and again.

The next night, our youngest, the 13 year old, does the same.

The third night, I wake on my own, but can’t get back to sleep.

I look for the moon, but it’s dark outside. I  consider my cycle, but it’s still a ways off. I review my day, but there was no caffeine.

I remember then.  My son is missing. The first-born. The one to be 18 tomorrow. But he’s just over at a friend’s house, for now.

In a week’s time, he’ll be gone–for good–off to college.

As the hours pass, I grow sleepy, and the lamp shade that sits on my floor, waiting to be mounted, becomes a Moses Basket, the one he sleeps inside.

I could pick him up, but I let him sleep, and I sleep too… dreaming goodbyes.