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.

What kinds of things could you write about? Places to go, things to do with your kids. I used to think being a hotel concierge would be cool, or a kids/family concierge somewhere. I'm passed that now for sure. Which brings me to another thing-I used to think that having a baby/small kids was the absolute pinnacle. I was so excited about all of it-from maternity clothes to baby gear-to the actual baby/preschooler. I thought that being 30 was probably just IT. Also-prior to that, the 20something post college, wear great clothes and go out with your girlfriends stage was wonderful to. I paid careful attention during those stages to anyone I saw out also at similar stages or right above me--how did they look? what were they wearing? how did my outfit stack up against there? (Oy vey.) And I couldn't imagine that being 20-35 wasn't the absolute best time of your entire life and that those women were always who I aspired to. And do you know something-now that I'm 51-I don't notice them AT all. I mean-I think, oh, young mom with baby. But I don't look at the kid, or the baby gear, or what the mom really looks like, or wonder about her life in any way. I just think, young mom, btdt, moving on to other thoughts. Part of my crying years ago when we finally took the crib down (and part of why I had so many kids and they're so spaced out in ages) is I could not imagine my role as anything other than Young Mom. Not that I've rebranded myself as something real either (I jokingly call myself Old Mom or Type B Mom) but I'm at peace with letting that part of my life go. And beyond just grieving, and being content, I actually love the stage we're at. I like that my teens are busy and funny and smart-and their surliness and occasional curtness-is balanced out by G's sweetness and still wanting to snuggle. I have built in babysitters. There's only a very occasional time where I have to scramble for childcare or carpool help. This is just a wonderful, unexpected, time of my life.