Happy Days

I remember a moment in May of 2018, as JT’s high school graduation and then departure from home for college was rapidly approaching, when I felt lost in the face of the coming changes.  I didn’t feel quite ready to give up my job as a full-time mama and I longed to stop time and even rewind it to experience again the days of working full time and then coming home to supervise homework, wash the laundry, get supper on the table, and tuck an eight-year-old into bed at night.  

I’m a realist and even in the midst of that longing, I remembered that those days weren’t always easy.  But on that day in May, as I was about to celebrate a high school graduate and was looking at a future that felt uncertain, I wished to go back.  

I am never a fan of uncertainty and the prospect of an “empty nest” (what a horrible phrase!) was uncertain.  How would I feel after JT left for school?  Would life (and the house) be too quiet?  Would I miss him with an empty aching feeling?  Worse yet, would he be homesick?  I thought he was ready to go but what if I was wrong?  How would I fill the time ahead of me?  The questions piled up as the uncertainty loomed.  

Sitting here now, from the vantage point of more than a year since that transition,  I see those longings in a more complete framework.  Some days, as I leave work with a bag full of things to be done at home, I wonder how I ever did it all.  JT is home for Thanksgiving Break, his second one as a college boy, and he’s happy and settled.  Life without a child at home turns out to be full and busy, with text messaging as the primary tool of my parenting game and time for T and I to enjoy one another’s company.  Between T and two cats, the house never feels lonely.  There is less laundry and the house stays clean for longer.  It turns out I find that quite lovely.

Being the parent of a young adult is a different sort of challenge and the fact that I like the man JT is becoming is a happy blessing.  My heart is full and glad and that’s a very nice way to contemplate the coming Thanksgiving.