My baby turns 18 today. I am now the mother of 3 adults. While they are still MY children, they are no longer actually children. This will take some getting used to.
As a parent, the months go slow and the years go fast. Its cliche, but true, that it doesn’t seem that long ago that she was a little girl. Today, Guzzy is a young woman. Still in High School and still living with her parents, but moving slightly every day towards greater independence. It is likely to be a gradual transition. The empty nest is not yet ‘just’ around the corner. Today is a step in that journey.
I had a hard time with empty nest when my first two chicks flew the coop. My oldest, Kelly (chronic gin-rummy loser and mother of my grandbabies), has always had an independent spirit. She had a plan and couldn’t WAIT to spread her wings at a college far enough away from home to truly break the apron strings.
Two years later my son, Ben, moved out the weekend after his High School Graduation. Ben was always super smart, but academics were not his priority. He and a few of his like-minded under-achiever buddies rented an apartment nearby and proceeded to kill brain cells at an alarming rate. Ben worked during this ‘gap’ year. There’s nothing like a year of working 3rd shift in a meat locker to make a young man reconsider his higher education options. Ben decided to go to college and eventually (this is a whole ‘nother tale) achieved a degree in physics.
Despite the fact that I still had a young child at home, I was slightly befuddled with the change in my life’s purpose and circumstances when the older two were not a daily presence in my life. After pouring the best of myself into these two young people, including several years as a single mom, they were gone (although the check writing continued for many more years). Kelly and Ben were a bit unusual in that neither of them moved back home, other than for the occasional summer break.
Guzzy is still assessing her options for next year. She will find her way; whatever path or timetable that takes. We, her parents, have already begun the process of cautiously stepping back. It feels like setting a younger child on a bike without training wheels for the first time, helping them get their balance, and then stepping back. Sometimes this sequence needs to be repeated more than once–but eventually the child finds their balance and takes off.