Empty Nesting

 I'm convinced that having teenagers is God's way of preparing parents for the "empty nest".  When the fledglings have flown, is the mother bird delighted or sad that her chicks are gone?  Of course, in Nature's world, where animals do thing instinctively, the parent birds' only job is to hatch the eggs and feed the chicks until they are old enough and strong enough to fly free.  Then it's off to the next brood or migration...or simply finding sustenance to survive until the next breeding season.  It just isn't that simple in the Human world.  Human bairn stay dependent far longer than our animal friends.  It takes decades for a human chick to be ready to fly with confidence.  In the meantime, human parents have expectations about how we want our chicks to grow up.  We form connections, work hard, sacrifice, and pray that our children will grow up to be mentally and physically healthy.  Most parents love their kids so much that they would take a bullet for them.

When babies are born, parents feed them, bathe them, clothe them, and talk to them.  When they are toddlers, we rejoice in their firsts:  first smile, first time they roll over on their own, first crawls, first time standing, first steps...and the list goes on.  All of this is the same as with the parent birds, with a twist: the birds move on when their job is done, but humans cling to their children, even when grown.  Honestly, I have never met a mother who didn't feel wistful when their babies aren't babies anymore.  Not a single one!   

Teenagers present a special challenge.  They are not really children anymore, but not really adults, either.  They want to test their wings sometimes before they even have feathers enough to try to fly.  Happy are the parents that can find a way to communicate with their young ones in a way that will encourage rather than discourage!  It's a crap shoot.  What works today might not work tomorrow.  Still, we keep trying.

I was a pretty easy kid to raise.  I was a good student with virtually no teenage rebellion.  I mostly respected my parents and followed rules.  ALL rules at the time, theirs and society's.  My mother gave lip service to that, but she also repeated a saying (many times over):  "You don't pay for your raising until you have children of your own."  Yeah...that's a curse.  It means, in essence, that when it's your turn to become a parent, you will suddenly understand how tough things were for your own parents. As Sheldon Cooper would say, "BAZINGA"!  I do remember saying to my one-and-only child when she was a teenager--particularly in middle school--"I hope you have six kids and that they are all just like you!"  Yup.  That was the "payin' for your raisin' " curse.  Still, I felt that we were close and shared many passions.  In my experience, family was/is everything.  I could never be a female bird.  Turning loose has never been in my DNA.  

As my daughter's life changed, she changed with it, taking my grandchildren along for the ride.  Almost every move took her, her "new" husband, and my grandchildren farther from me in distance.  When they moved to Washington State for her husband's job, I was mostly devastated, but we found ways for me to visit at least twice a year.  I'm sure I loved it more than they did.  Such beautiful things to see!  Even in my handicapped condition, I enjoyed every second.  So many memories and wonderful experiences!  Still, I couldn't even imagine moving that far away from my parents.  I was definitely feeling orphaned, and the COVID-19 pandemic made things much worse for me.  I missed my family!  I wept daily. 

My granddaughter has started her sophomore college year on campus at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.  Her freshman year was spent online at home due to the pandemic.   She and her brother were able to come to the Midwest to visit with their dad and two sets of grandparents this August.  I was ecstatic!  At one point, I told Robin (aka Adrian) that her mother was going to miss her when she went to college.  Her response was, "I know.  She cries every time I mention it."   Aha!  My daughter is now feeling the pinch of the beginnings of the Empty Nest!  She still has a young'un at home, soon to become an 18-year-old adult, so she hasn't quite felt the whole pinch yet...but maybe she is starting to understand how very difficult it is to let go.  Adrian called her mother from campus last week, just to chit-chat.  Of course, Megan cried thereafter.  Maybe now she can begin to comprehend my anxieties when I don't hear from my own kid.  Maybe now, we can be Birds of a Feather in the process of empty nesting.   Maybe my daughter is paying for her raising?  

After all these years, the emptiness of my nest still haunts me.  I want my family to have their best life, of course.  I just wish they weren't so far away!