Empty

Summer is over.  My daughter is going back to college.  My son will follow next week.  What am I going to do with this strange empty nest that I have dutifully warmed, cleaned, made and remade for twenty one years? 

Seven thousand six hundred and sixty-nine days of uninterrupted motherhood are coming to a fizzling end.  How did this happen?  How am I supposed to fill the void left by the school lunches, the loads of laundry, the phone calls, the night fevers, the sprains, the heartbreaks, the missing socks, the flat tires, the lost needles for the ball pumps?  Are the tuition checks and a Thanksgiving turkey truly all that will be required of me for the months to come?

Should I start going to midnight movies?  Take art classes?  Enjoy leisurely walks with no one home demanding dinner? 

Should I get excited or weep at the swiftness of life?

I feel that I have ran this very long marathon, parts of which were exhilarating, others tiring and repetitive.  And it's over.  I am reaching this odd finish line but the only spectators are a small group of fellow middle-age mothers, and there are neither podium nor flowers. 

Stranger yet, there's a new path beyond but I am not sure where it leads or what it is about.  I am urged to enjoy life but I've been following the well-scripted road for so long, it is so familiar to me, how am I supposed to invent my own path all of a sudden?  And will macrame classes or a shiny new car really do the trick?   (I could do with the new car.)

It have no idea and it's too early to tell.

All I know is that tonight I am eating all the vanilla ice cream with all the cherries and the last of the lemon cookies.  Why not?  I don't have to set an example any more.  That's a small start.

Comments

[Jennifer Brown]

Oops last comment was meant for this entry....love it!