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When your only child nears high school graduation, strange thoughts creep into your head. Thoughts that really shouldn’t be there, that you try to ignore, but can’t. Thoughts along the lines of, “How many days till college move-in?”
Not just only children’s parents have these thoughts, of course. I can imagine the conflicted mindset of parents with several kids approaching adulthood, the twinges of guilty glee as they hoof like Dorothy toward the Oz of more free time and quietude.
We recently visited a couple of fledgling empty nesters, Marsha’s cousin Brien and his wife Kate, whose only daughter had just matriculated at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Brien is an only child; Kate’s nearest blood relatives are hundreds of miles away. Such circumstances, you’d think, would make for potent breast beating over Erin’s absence. “So, how are you guys surviving on your own?” we asked. The two of them swapped looks suggesting they’d been enacting kinky sex scenarios (starting at the first rest area on the way home) since depositing Erin at her dorm. Then Kate, whose laugh has been known to halt conversation at adjacent restaurant tables, pealed.
“We don’t miss the drama!” she gasped. On cue, our own thespian, whom we’d left at home with the sniffles, texted us: “I’m dying!!!”
Ah, the drama. The 0 to 60 in 3.2 tirades over a missing scarf (though twelve others are available), the schmoozing of local merchants the night before yearbook ads are due. And the stamping. Possibly a thoroughbred in a previous life, Anna routinely punctuates discontent by denting the floorboards. Ron Howard’s movie Parenthood ends with the notion that the roller coaster is inherently more fun than the merry-go-round. Maybe so, but Marsha and I are ready for some painted ponies that don’t splinter the Pergo.
But as they say, be careful what you wish for. Till now, Anna’s absences have been few and far between--- a week at soccer camp, a couple of overseas tours with other students, all punctuated by calls and texts etched with her usual directness. (On a trip with Marsha to Dallas/ Fort Worth, I texted Anna that Mom was burning rubber even more than usual on the Great Plains. Her response: “Good luck! Remember if you die I get the house.”) Gaps with her have barely opened before being puttied over by the continuum of our lives, before the notion of life away from us--- first at college, then in a career, possibly out-of-state--- has even registered.
The truth is, having been whisked along by the family process for nearly two decades, Marsha and I aren’t ready for such a transition. Safe within the confines of routine, we indulge in bravado, ignoring the darkness at the edges. We’re like someone who, looking at a great poem, thinks he can write it, but in reality has trouble stringing together a few iambs.
Secretly, we’re anxious. About creeping insularity.
However much Anna’s eventual leave-taking is necessary and even desired, we’re concerned, if we’re honest with ourselves, about it leaving us unmoored. We take it for granted that we’ll always be grounded in relationships, jobs, hobbies; after all, sixty is the new forty. But what happens if (when?) we start losing those connections?
We’ve seen it happen sometimes with older empty nesters. Going through the motions at work. Going to a show and leaving at intermission. Never trying new food. Not traveling because gas is expensive, or vacationing at the same place every year because they get a deal.
Brrr. Creeping insularity.
I’m not saying we’ll be waiting for Anna with a rent-control option on our basement as she steps off the dais with her diploma. That would be unfair to all concerned, and, anyway, she’s made it clear she would rather live under a bridge than with us for long after high school. But we may find ourselves sauntering the road to Oz a bit more mindfully than we expected.