Easing toward the empty nest

My kids are currently 23, 21, and 18. The oldest is away at college. The middle child lives in an apartment in our violin store building and is an apprentice at a tattoo shop across the street. The youngest is in her final year of high school and we are still waiting to hear back from the last couple of colleges she's interested in.

Officially they are all adults. Realistically they are all still supported by us as they continue to build skills that will help them live on their own at some point. We're glad to help. We're also glad that we didn't go cold turkey from having kids around, to their complete absence in our day-to-day lives. I like when the oldest returns on school breaks. I like that we see the middle child more often than we did when she lived in our house and retreated (as teens often do) behind her bedroom door. I like that my baby is around for games of Boggle most evenings. She's quiet and keeps to herself, but she's definitely still home.

I feel like we're easing into the empty nest years. It's an interesting transition, because if you'd asked me when my kids were small how I would be handling this concept, it would have sounded too sad. I love having a front row seat to my kids' lives. But I may also be ready for something new.

Someone asked me recently what having just one grown kid still at home even entails. I was a little taken aback because I definitely still feel the weight of parenting, but truthfully my daughter doesn't need much. She's in charge of dinner four nights a week (we get a Hello Fresh box which cuts down on decisions and shopping and food waste, and delegating dinner in this way was one of the best ideas we ever tried). She takes the bus to school. She seldom if ever needs help with homework and is handling all her IB classes just fine. It's not like with little kids where you have to help them bathe and dress, etc.

But it definitely impacts your life to be available all the time. Parenting a self-sufficient kid is like being on call 24/7. If she misses the bus, we have to drive her across town. There are still doctor and dentist appointments. There are still prescriptions to keep track of. There are piano lessons, and for a while she had debate that she needed to be picked up from twice a week, along with occasional meets on weekends. We went to our very last parent-teacher conference over a week ago. We may not have to technically do very much, but we still have to be ready to drop things at a moment's notice the way parents are sometimes called to do.

I don't envy people still in the early days of their parenting journeys. It's a lot. It can be great fun, and I'm glad I got to do much of it, but I've reached a stage in my life where it mostly looks exhausting. I may never be lucky enough to have grandchildren, but I understand the appeal. Getting to visit some of those experiences again without having to commit to them full time sounds great.

Starting this fall, we expect to have no children living at home most of the year. Having grown children means rethinking what holidays mean, what travel can be, and not being tethered to the particulars of a school calendar. The amount of time saved simply from reductions in meals, dishes, and cleaning opens many possibilities.

The first big thing on our agenda is doing a remodel of the first floor of our house. Last year at this time I had a frustrating experience with my knees that required weeks of physical therapy, and it gave me a preview of potential complications from aging in the future. I really like our house and would prefer not to move ever again, so we're going to bring our bedroom down to the first floor, add a real bathroom with a walk-in shower, and bring the laundry up from the basement. We'll move my home shop upstairs (because one day if that's an issue we can always bring it back down), leave our youngest's room alone for a few years, and make our current bedroom into a proper guest room. It's a big project, but the idea of living entirely on the first floor seems like a good long term plan, and one best started early. None of that would be comfortable to do with any kids still living at home.

I'm looking forward to going out with my husband occasionally. Four or five people going anywhere is a lot of money and/or effort. Just two of us trying a new restaurant sounds so easy. Buying only two tickets to a movie or a show sounds affordable. 

My husband is also a lot easier to convince to do anything. Trying to dislodge the kids from the house has always been a challenge. They like doing things once we're out, but dragging them to any of it is often more work than it should be. Seriously, my mandolin orchestra may possibly got to Cremona, Italy this fall, and I invited my middle kid along since the town is her namesake. The other two will be in school, but I figured her schedule has more flexibility, especially with this much notice, and she's on the fence about it. How? Who turns down a free trip to Italy? Anyway, I love the idea of finding dog-friendly trips to take where Ian and I can close the store for a few days and go see something or visit someone just because we can.

I'm also getting absurdly excited by the idea of cleaning out our house. That's somehow hard to do with extra people in it, and I'm not even sure why. I want get rid of anything we don't use, starting by emptying the basement. There are small bikes and old pots and pans and dried up cans of paint and old floaties, etc. There are some useless things that I still want but that need to be better organized. There is a section of the basement I'd like to paint and make more habitable for my bandsaw. But most of it needs to go! I spend what little time I have for cleaning simply repeating myself with clearing the same surfaces over and over that using that reclaimed time to finally tackle messes we've put off for years will be satisfying.

I even have visions in my head of creating a once a month quartet meet up at my store after hours, where anyone who feels like doing a bit of chamber music purely for the joy of it can come over and pull up a stand. Wouldn't that be lovely?

When imagining empty nest possibilities, I tend to remember a two week stretch where my husband took all the kids and their cousin to the cottage and I had to stay behind with the dog. A friend invited me for an evening bike ride that she did with a group once a week, and at first I turned her down. I never had time to spare for something like that. But my first day home alone I cleaned the house, and the second night I realized I didn't have to do that again. It stayed clean. There was no laundry to do. There were no dishes. I realized I did have time to go on that bike ride.

I'm sure life will throw challenges at us and anticipating any sort of smooth sailing in life feels foolish at best, but currently the idea of my husband and I only having to be responsible for ourselves in the coming years sounds like a well-earned break, rather than the lonely existence I once would have pictured with the kids gone. 

We did okay, I think. We got the kids this far. There's still more to help guide them through. Do we ever stop needing our parents? I know I still need my mom. I expect my kids to still need me. As long as they keep coming back regularly enough that I can hug them and occasionally cook them something they like, I think this new phase will be fine.

I'm excited to see what they will do. I'm just as excited to see what I will do.

Having a scoopable baby-size dog also helps