Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

BACKWARDS AND FORWARD

i love being, ahem, a grownup. that's what bill and i and our friends call it, and i'm sticking to that term. face it, kids. you either die, or you grow up. if you're lucky, you'll pass this way. and you'll do it either gracefully or kicking and screaming with denial. thinking that you can and WILL STILL wear a mini-skirt. or that you deserve a young and beautiful partner. or that nobody will notice that your hair's not real. or that you might as well have kids now with that new young and beautiful partner. so much freedom to make uncommon (at best) or ridiculous (at worst) choices.

usually, lives follow a certain path. a time for every season. childhood, youth, young adulthood, courtship, marriage, a short -- or longer -- period of freedom, then children (which bring with them a certain amount of enslavement. or SHOULD. unfortunately some parents don't get that. oops sorry -- showing my age there). followed by the bittersweet days of watching your children leave and thrive, if you're lucky. followed by the days of "adulthood". the empty nest and all its glories.

ohmygod. the empty nest. the term that filled me with such terror and hopelessness when contemplated as a young mom. bill and i love, love, love being parents. we were completely and slavishly devoted to them. we can say that we feel good about the kind of parents we were. and are. we did and continue to do everything that our hearts told us we had to do. it's a constantly changing, constantly redefined role. a whole 'nother book. now what i want to write about today. i'll start another paragraph.

the empty nest. it is freaking AWESOME. especially -- or maybe ONLY AFTER HAVING DONE what we felt we needed to do when the nest was occupied by the chicks. i don't measure the results -- i measure the efforts. the "kids" have free will. matt's not a phD candidate because of what we did. and neither is j a recovering drug addict because of what we did. or failed to do. we did the best we could, and we feel pretty damned good about how we did it.

when the boys were little, i'd listen to my big sister, diann, "complaining" about the constant needs and drama of teenagers. i'd say, "at least you can go to the bathroom without one of them hanging on your knees!" i learned quickly that they're with you everywhere, either literally or metaphorically. i used to say of those days that i was "in the trenches of motherhood." i learned that you'd better be in the trenches one way or the other or you're not there at all. different ages, different trenches.

i love that i don't have to cook a full balanced meal at least twice a day (in addition to everyday family dinners at the table , WE HAD DAILY FAMILY BREAKFASTS before school!) now bill and i eat when we're hungry and what we want. last night we had coconut cake for dinner at 10 p.m. we stayed up until at least 4 a.m. watching movies and cartoons. today breakfast was with two of our dearest friends at a local restaurant. started at 10 a.m. ended well past 12:30. laughed loud and hard. the four of us, three of whom sported -- either in jewelry or tattoos -- peace symbols, two of whom sported new "big lebowski" t-shirts. "maturity" comes in many flavors. we came home and took a 4-hour nap. i woke up hungry. bill made me a grilled-cheese sandwich and a butter-pecan latte.

in our house we continue to have a division of labor, albeit flexible and known only to us, and we understand that it makes sense only to us. i'm GENERALLY in charge of the kitchen. in general and with great flexibility. bill's purview has always been cheesecakes and has evolved to most of the cookie baking, the "coffee" (another tome, another time), all sandwich making (esPECIALLY grilled cheese after my one ill-fated attempt 33 years ago to "improve" perfection by "toasting" the sandwiches in a toaster oven and substituting butter with mayonaisse). bill's in charge of the dog walking (i "try" to accompany them on at least one of their daily walks). i'm mostly in charge of a lot of the other stuff.

we've learned to be flexible. and the empty nest allows us to do what suits us. when it suits us. and i realize that we're AWFULLY lucky that "our" jobs (bill's lawpractice operated out of the loft here is such that 99 percent of his work is done on whatever schedule HE sets. my "job" is billing and record keeping). we're AWFULLY young to have such flexibility in our schedule. that friday night staying up until 4 a.m.? happens a lot. on whatever day we want.

i thought for a minute a couple of weeks ago that the jackal chick was going to be coming back into the nest shortly for a temporary stay. but -- drum roll, please... he asked us to go look at a townhouse in the way-cool tremont neighborhood that he saw on craigslist. we did, thought it would work for him, he agreed, and he'll be heading back to cleveland mid-february! job transfer is in the works, and a florida friend may be joining him within the month. if not, he'll find somebody to share the place.

don't know how to wrap this up so i'll leave you with this:

i like turtles.

Posted by Stacey at January 5, 2008 06:35 PM