Musings about my almost empty nest and middle age (can you still be middle aged in your late 50s?)

 Funny I was thinking about how envious I was about having a whole amazing life ahead filled with possibilities and life's joys. And then I realized-I'm there right now. I can be excited now for whatever is around the corner. I have no career I'm trying to build, or bad dates to endure, or having to stay up late to complete a project. I'm down to just G to check his grades/feed him second dinner/nag to make sure he's turned in everything. I am at an amazing spot. I have time for walks, lunches out, sitting on the couch reading a great book. I don't have to be hustling for poster board at 9pm, or hunting down leotards or refereeing fights over how long someone has played with a special lego set. Instead of bemoaning how much I miss them being little (because that was f-ing hard, don't kid yourself) or feeling like I should have done "more" with my single days (travel, fulfilling career) I need to embrace the NOW. I can drink my coffee, and enjoy sunny walks with the dogs, and spend time learning with various apps and podcasts, and meet up for brunch with friends. What I wanted more than anything else: a happy marriage, a big family, a comfortable lifestyle where I don't have to buy things off the sale rack, lots of friends, a beautiful home: I've gotten all that. And I made that happen-don't think it just fell out of the sky. 

hello august monday

Just spent 20 minutes "window" shopping and putting things in carts only to think "why? i'm going no where and have gained weight so i won't be happy with how anything looks anyway." Ouch. I saw a tv ad for some new depression medication and i thought-huh, i do seem to have some of those symptoms.  whatever. i wish i could feel respite when i lay down on my bed in the afternoons and evenings-that used to give me this feeling of "ahhhhh". and now it doesn't, which makes me even more anxious and bummed out. like i can't get away from the feelings of impending doom and gloom. i keep trying. i keep trying with sweets. i keep trying with a cocktail-which has gone from maybe once a week at the start of the pandemic to now four nights a week. like something to "celebrate" or look forward to. and it completely does not work for any more than the time i'm eating/drinking. then i'm right back to where i started. which is fucking covid, the fucking administration, our miserable world, i can't see my parents, i'm angry that other people are still going on vacation/seeing their friends and family (sometimes with masks and sometimes not), i always liked instagram for the "fun" stories but now seeing other people not socially distancing on it is making me feel even more isolated, i'm worried about school for the boys, i'm scared A's severe anxiety will come back, i stress that one of us will end up getting the virus and it will have catastrophic results, i stopped exercising and doing yoga and meditating-i kept thinking it would make me feel better. which i guess in those moments they did-but then i'm still here in the midst of this fucking pandemic with no end in sight. What do you know from the thousands of dollars you have spent on coaching programs over the years? Thoughts cause my feelings. My feelings are what create my reality. Okay. Deep breaths. I can't change covid. I can't change other people's behaviors.  I can only create my own thoughts about all of it.  Everyone is doing the best they can.  I am doing the best I can. when this started i thought i could ninja mind work myself into the best physical and emotional shape ever-all the yoga, and meditation and family togetherness and cleaning schedules and i was making Meals, and doing everything i could think of for us to set a tone of fun and harmony.  that level of "perfect" is not sustainable. i need to keep the house together, i need to grocery shop and feed people. i need to exercise and meditate and do yoga to try and give me a semblance of feeling like myself. this will end. we will get through this. i need to put down my fucking phone. that is leading me down into the pits of hell-between the shitty news, and covid rates and polls and seeing other people travel to florida or hang with their parents. 

I thought it would be super quiet here-but B has people over at night, A is always giving us a sporting event play by play, G is around, sometimes with a friend.  S is in and out. We're planning E's visit home for Kaaboo, our visits up there for Parents Weekend and the Big Game, thinking ahead to Thanksgiving. I love this. I know she's really happy where she is, B will be happy wherever he ends up. A is really liking high school. G loves his class. Everyone is happy and doing well. I'm enjoying (not going to lie) having less craziness-and there's still plenty to do around here. I have periods where I miss having babies and little people-but that was also a lot of hard work and tears and diapers and tantrums and sleepless nights. It wasn't all snuggles and kisses. I remember a lot of times of feeling overwhelmed and worried.  I don't dread being an empty nester (maybe also because it's not happening for a really, really long time.) I'm bemused when I see friends who got married just a little bit before we did, or had small kids when we did, and who are now empty nesters because they had fewer kids, and their kids are closer in age.  I have such a ways to go since we had G later.  He has 8 more years until college. Okay-my friends who do have empty nests-what does that look like for most of them? Logistically, less laundry and fewer meals. Well, C does their laundry currently and I don't mind cooking. What else? They can go out more? I don't really care about going out a lot.  And with older kids around, if we want to go to the movies or out to dinner, we do it. Travel? Well, S is working, and I traveled with him a lot last year. If I want to do that again, I could figure out a way to get someone to stay with the boys.  But I am happy to be home right now. What else would be different? Hmm-less worry.  That's in your head and you could do that right now with them being home.  You know you can't control them once they're out of the house, you don't know what they're doing, you have to trust in them and the universe's plan that they'll be happy and safe.  You could tap into those feelings with them living at home too. I can't "control" who they're hanging out with at school.  I don't know what their internal lives are like. I have to trust in them and que sera, sera.  I know I'm not mourning what's passed.  That whole website of women who are bereft of their kids growing up and going off to college, I do not understand.  And I love being a mom, having babies, hanging out with my teens, I have a wonderful family with amazing kids. They need to go out into the world and be adults and live their lives.  Would you want that time to go on forever where they're in your house and you're responsible for every little thing?? Don't you have your own friends and your own interests?? I like my kids' friends, but I don't "hang out" with them-so I'm not missing them either. That's weird to me. Of course it felt emotional when I cleaned out E's room, or think back to when she was little. I feel nostalgia and I can miss certain things about that time, and I feel that "Awwww" when I see photos of them about to walk down to the bus stop, or at the Little Italy festival. But I don't think that time is "better" than this time. There was plenty about that time that was tough, and there's plenty of time with them now that I just love. As my dad always said, these are the good old days.

Things I've learned over the last few weeks:

If you listen to French jazz or Duke Ellington on headphones while walking through a city, you will feel like the star of a Nora Ephron movie.

Being at the Met from opening until 3:30 is too long.

Cookie dough is delicious for three bites.

Finding my way to one of the best spots for Italian pastry in the North End, and then getting a great picture of the cannoli on IG, was more satisfying than actually eating it.

Reading a great book (Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan) reminds me of what my writing teacher in Jan Term would repeat:"Show, don't tell."

Good comedies are hard to come by. Lady Bird was wonderful-clever lines, pathos, real mix of characters. Set it Up was cute in parts, but silly overall-and the real star was New York scenery.

It's an internal fight for me sometimes to not just give in to "good enough" for the sake of having something finished. There are times when things do need to be done the right way-even if it means speaking up or waiting for completion.

Last night she cleaned out her room-took everything off the walls, emptied the closet, donated/tossed/packed every bit of clothing that was in her dresser.  The recycling bin is filled. I put a huge bag for Goodwill in my trunk. She has two big suitcases packed for her summer in NYC, and three boxes put aside for Berkeley, several bins of her favorite books (her love of reading has been a constant), and a few bins of keepsakes for storage. That's a wrap. I can now sell/donate the off-white little girl furniture that we picked out 19 years ago in Baltimore, that has moved from our 1929 Tudor in Mount Washington, and then to the big new house in Howard County, to here in her teen room in San Diego-all the iterations of our life together as a family. We'll paint over the hot pink and put in a closet shelving system, buy a double bed and a desk for B (that he himself will only need for a year before he goes off to college), and A will finally get his own bedroom, after sharing for his whole childhood.  Suddenly, our house that was always filled and lively and loud, is seeming awfully quiet and too big for just us. I know we'll readjust to the space, and I'll calibrate meal sizes and weekend plans, and it will be a new version of our family and wonderful too. We'll still have visits and vacations and special times together as the six of us-but all of us really "home" and our own unit of six is now a memory.

K was saying she really misses when her kids were little-and I hear that-I loved having babies and toddlers and little people. But I don't miss the broken sleep, and the endless snacks and sippy cups and buckling screaming, squirmy toddlers into car seats on hot days. It was so much tougher than I acknowledged at the time. It was what I wanted more than anything in the world, and I am so grateful I had an abundance of it, but man-exhausting. I have such happy memories of Friday night dance parties and Disneyland days and all of us trouping into Starbucks and holding someone on my hip at all times. But I also have a balanced view-parenting a determined toddler/preschooler/school aged child meant so much patience and creativity --and then intense guilt when I would invariably lose it all. I didn't like my mothering a lot of the time. I'm finding it so much easier to parent older kids (not that I don't yell/lose my temper/have regrets about what I say in the heat of the moment.) I had kids with motor and emotional challenges-there were years of OT sessions, and speech therapies, and "things to work on at home" and watching them be aloof or "different" than their same age peers was brutal in my head. The thoughts I would have, and the feelings I would try and buffer: Would they ever have "true" friends? Would they learn how to "fit in"? Would they be able to do the physical things that their same age group seemed to do with ease? What does their future hold?? Oh my god-it was so incredibly painful to watch them and worry and to not know and feel so fucking helpless. On the plus side, and so different than what K is working through now, I saw almost 20 years ago that you can't control your children or their actions/feelings/outcomes. Even when your baby is just a year old-and you're dressing them in cute outfits and picking their play group-you have ZERO control of their bodies and minds. But I tried to do that for years-and I let that weigh on me-literally weigh on me. I carried around 50 pounds of guilt/fear/stress. This was the year that not only did E grow up and acknowledge her own beauty and power-but I did too. I realize completely that she's just fine-and when she's not-she can figure it out on her own. I can't solve it for her. I can't solve it for any of them. And the burden is off-just like that. I can release all the need to try and hang on, and control, and the worry of how they will be or what they will do.  They will be fine-because it's their own journey, not mine, and it never, ever was.

Mother's Day 2018. What are moments that stand out to me that typify the joys of being a mother? There was the Milkshake concert in the fall of 2004 on the steps of the Baltimore Museum of Art. I was holding blue eyed baby A, with little E and B at my side, and I was crying because I was so happy. The big family with the adorable baby and toddler and darling little girl, the poignant music about appreciating having small kids and the beauty of life, a gorgeous fall day on the east coast: all my dreams were realized and encapsulated in that moment.  There was another time when Gabriel was a toddler and we were driving up to Pennsylvania for a Sunday outing-and we'd stopped at a Starbucks and someone commented on what a beautiful family we had.  I got that same flash of joy last summer in Kauai, sitting outside at a food truck, laughing, enjoying being on vacation in such a beautiful spot. A mom sitting at the next picnic table offered to take a family picture of us, and after I posted it, Debbie commented that I looked like a Queen surrounded by my subjects-and that's how I felt: absolutely glorious and brimming with joy. There are, of course, many more harried moments of racing to get various people to various places, with Target stops and last minute projects and thrown together meals that half of my family doesn't like. But I can see those times are winding down.  Diapers and sleep deprived nights are a distant memory, and like a flash, fixing lunch boxes and monitoring screen time will come to an end too . What will remain, I think, are the more special moments because of their rarity. As my children get older, my role as a mother evolves too, and my appreciation for them grows. I never foresaw how happy it would make me to see my older kids talking together, listening to my younger two play together, while not even being part of their discussions or fun. Just the observation of them as interesting, funny and kind people on their own-and liking each other-that's the best gift I could ever receive.