Surveying the Empty Nest

Age 3, the whole wide world and South Shore Park ahead.

I dropped my youngest child off at college this weekend. It was strange and exciting for both of us.

We drove out to La Crosse the day before to spend the night at my brother's house to make the move into the dorm the next morning a little easier. The back of the car was mostly filled with Quinn's new bike that we got her as a graduation present, which we thought might give her a little more freedom to travel in her new town. Aside from the bike, she packed light for such a move: Three IKEA bags filled with bedding, clothes, and everything else. Plus a laundry basket, and big batch of cookies she'd baked to share with her roommate and others on her floor.

We brought the dog, partially because the dog doesn't like to be apart from me, and partially because she would be good company on the drive home. We set up Domino's bed on the sideways front wheel of the bike in the back where she settled in and could see us both and look out the window. The idea of driving Quinn someplace hours away and leaving her there was incredibly weird. I needed to return with someone, so Domino got the job.

My brother, Barrett, teaches at La Crosse, and lives within easy biking distance from the campus. I think it's great that Quinn chose a school that's away from home, but still near family. It's a pretty area, and UWL is incredibly thoughtful and organized. Quinn signed up for more credits than is probably wise, but compared to the IB course-load she recently completed at Rufus King High School, she thought it looked doable, particularly since the classes meet on such a loose schedule compared to what she's used to. I told her to drop something if it gets to be too much, but I think for at least the first semester she can probably handle it.

Move-in was on Saturday morning, so Barrett was free to come with us and help unload the car. We drove behind him as he led the way by bike. Quinn was reassured by how much less traffic there was to navigate compared to the bike rides we've been doing to the farmers market at home. 

Before checking in, we needed to replace Quinn's student ID already. She thinks she may have lost it at orientation back in June. I found this alarming, but Quinn was unfazed. She said she lost her high school ID at least once a year and replacements are no problem. Sure enough, the student office was able to print her up a new one in a matter of minutes. 

From there, we decided to pick up her books since the bookstore was in the same building. I cannot believe how much easier things are compared to when I was in school (before laptops and the internet and I had to use a card catalog at the library and do my papers on a typewriter or in the computer lab... We may as well lump all of my experience in with playing hoop-and-stick at this point). Quinn swiped her ID, immediately got a printout of all the books she needed and where to find them (and if the super easy system was too hard there were at least half a dozen volunteers standing by to help), and when we took the pile of books to the checkout, they swiped her card again and that was it. The texts are rented and far more affordable than buying all the books used to be. (My oldest said at her school the whole process is even easier, because they scan your card and then collect the books for you to take to checkout. But I liked wandering around with Quinn to find the books.)

With books and ID in hand, we went to unload the car. The dorm is in a convenient spot, and Quinn's room was only a few doors down from the entrance. Unloading was easy. The roommate was very nice (and also a sophomore, which Quinn appreciates because it's like having a personal guide to how things work).

I left a note and a little present on her desk that I told Quinn was for later. (It was a mini Boggle game that I added a key chain to, and she figured out what it was the moment she picked up the wrapped package and heard that distinctive rattle.)

Barrett declared Quinn's bike lock insufficient for the amount of bike theft that unfortunately happens on campus, so he directed us to his favorite bike shop (with a sweet pit bull named Wilma in the sunny window) and we picked up something harder to cut. Fingers crossed. I've experienced stolen bikes a few times and I don't want Quinn to go through that. But honestly, as far as crime goes, if that's the worst that happens life is good.

After dropping everything off, we located the different buildings Quinn's classes are in. The biology lecture room turned out to be directly across the hall from Barrett's lab where he has key-card access, which is why it was one of the few buildings we could actually enter on a holiday weekend. We went from there to the student union to grab some lunch to eat outside in the beautiful weather.

Then we took Quinn back to her dorm, I hugged her, and as I watched her from the the parking lot she turned to wave every few steps until she disappeared inside.

I said goodbye to my brother, and told him how much it means to me that he's nearby if Quinn needs something. Then I called Quinn from inside the car because I missed her already, and to ask if a CD I had planned to listen to had accidentally made it into her bags. (It hadn't.) I took a deep breath, and gave the dog a pat in the seat next to me.

It was hard to drive away. 

I think the longest I've ever been apart from Quinn would be about two weeks. Walking past her empty room at home is startling, but I know it will become normal. The first few days of walking past Aden's room each time she leaves for school again is still a hard adjustment. Ian drove her back up to UW Stout the day after I came back from La Crosse. I can't believe there are no kids in the house. I like having them home.

Although I will admit, over the end of the summer break, it was like my kids were trying to make this transition to not having them around easier for us. The house was a wreck. I love Aden's creativity, but the number of projects in process on all the available surfaces was crazy. Quinn and I pulled out a card table for playing Boggle because everyplace else was too cluttered to use, including the table on the deck. We still have not retrieved all the dirty dishes from various rooms of the house, and we are still digging out the kitchen. There is a large bowl of oil the kids were saving for something that I don't know how to get rid of. Aden lost one of her hissing roaches before she left. (That will be a fun surprise if it turns up.) 

Quinn at least did a great job cleaning and organizing her room before she moved out. I had honestly forgotten she had a rug. At least when I walk by her door I feel a bit of delight about the state of the room to balance out the pang of pain that she's not in it.

It helps that Mona is still around. I'm sure we won't see her as often now that her siblings aren't here to hang out with, but she's nice to have along for errands when she's free. Maybe I can convince her to come with me to a movie. And having a baby-sized dog is comforting.

So far this empty nest thing is strange. It's quiet, and my schedule feels oddly empty even though I always have a lot to do. It's hard to adjust to the fact that this is the new way it's going to be. Not just some weekend where the kids are away, but the new baseline for normal.

It's not bad, and in some ways just a return to an old forgotten normal. We're back to me and Ian again. It's been a long time since we planned things for just the two of us. We've spent decades specializing in a divide and conquer approach to parenting, where between the two of us we could handle everything. He's always been in charge of dentist appointments, I do the doctor. He does the laundry and the dishes, I handle the food and clutter. He does yard stuff, I do holiday things. Between the two of us there has always been someone to open the store while the other handles errands and we'd tag team among the many shifting responsibilities that come with raising kids.

But now the kids are out of the daily equation, and it's hard to remember what we did before they came into our lives. It will be fun to rediscover a new/old rhythm. It will be nice to do things like eat out and go places that are simpler for two people instead of five. I suppose we're getting a well-earned break. 

We're in the process of rethinking the house. There is a renovation plan in the works to concentrate our lives on the first floor. My home shop will move to my work building (since the point of having a home shop was to accommodate balancing violin making and caring for kids and that's not relevant now), and that former shop space will become our bedroom. We're turning a small room we've used as a guest space into a bathroom with an accessible shower. The current first floor bathroom will become a laundry room. The entire upstairs will be set up for guests and kids returning on breaks. My problems last year with my knees gave me insight as to what elements of our house will become difficult as we age, so addressing much of that now before issues arise seems smart. Living on one floor also will make the house feel less empty and more manageable.

In anticipation of the renovation, we've started moving things around and getting rid of stuff. Gone are the outgrown bikes and the tiny tennis rackets. The old drill with the dead batteries we can let go of. Paint cans from past room makeovers will be going to the dump. The sand toys should be in the hands of kids again, not in a bucket in our basement. 

The cleaning and reorganizing are good activities that Ian and I can do together as we reshape how we move through our days now. It is fun being just a couple again, (if you don't count the dog at my heels). It's odd cooking for only two, but a lot less pressure to cook at all. Not being tethered to our children's daily schedules frees up ours. We are already planning trips to the cottage, because why even run your own business if you can't choose your days off once in a while? 

With the pockets of unexpected free time that come with not doing as many chores on a relentless loop, I am teaching myself piano, which is meditative and a good distraction from the fact that I have no idea what any of my kids are doing and I'm not used to that. It's hard to unlearn that kind of constant monitoring after decades.

It's wild that Ian and I fell in love in college, made people, and after so many years where the center of all our decision making has been based around our children, that that whole chapter is finished. We raised three children. Their childhoods are over. There are still things to manage for them, such as orthodontist appointments and walking them through filing tax returns, etc. But what an astonishing thing to step back and declare that job essentially done. I think we did okay. I hope we did enough. All of our children are compassionate, curious, and interesting people, and I know the world is better for having them in it. 

Back in June, Quinn and I did a similar drive to La Crosse to the one this past weekend. My daughter and dog and I went out to stay at Barrett's for freshman orientation at UWL, where Quinn signed up for classes, got an (apparently short-lived) ID, and toured the campus. It's just over three hours by car from Milwaukee to La Crosse, and Quinn read to me for most of it. 

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki had been on my to-read pile for a some time, primarily because it had a female luthier character in it, and had been recommended to me by several people for that reason. It's an unlikely melding of genres that includes demons from hell contracting for souls, plus space ships, but also lutherie, violin performance, donuts, and the experience of a trans-woman character. We didn't finish the book on that trip, but we read a little more of it to each other at the cottage, and were determined to finish it on this recent trip. We didn't want to finish it without each other. We got very close on the actual drive, to the point where Quinn even offered to keep reading to me as we walked the dog around the neighborhood before actually approaching her uncle's house, but Barrett happily came bursting out to greet us and we set the book down. 

We went out to dinner and taught Quinn's uncle, aunt, and cousin how to play Wavelength (our latest fun family game) while we waited for our food. We had a great meal, headed back to the house where we helped tune a couple of unusual instruments, and then another walk with the dog. A lovely evening all around, but Quinn and I were also anxious to finally finish our book, and when we said our good nights to everyone and she was settled onto her bed in the guest space, I pulled up a rocking chair and read her the last couple of chapters.

Somehow for me that was the most fitting thing we could have done on this milestone weekend. Yes, it was good to see her dorm and meet her roommate and have lunch on campus together and share a tearful hug goodbye. But to be able to sit near Quinn while she lay in bed listening to my voice, engrossed in a story I was reading, felt full circle. 

I loved reading to my kids. When the books had pictures they would gather close on one of their beds and follow along. When we switched to chapter books, I used to read from the floor in the hallway between the rooms they occupied. We've read many books aloud in the car on road trips. I loved having Quinn read to me. I loved getting to read to her one last time before she was on her own.

When Quinn was three, her dad left for his second deployment to Iraq. Aden and Mona had school, but Quinn didn't yet and was disappointed. I took her shopping for her own school supplies and we set up a desk at the violin store for her to do "school work" while I repaired instruments. We referred to that setup as the "School of One" and Quinn had lots of papers and coloring supplies and she did a lot of map puzzles. To transfer any of those supplies back and forth from home she had a purple backpack.

 

She took that same backpack to college this past weekend. 

  

She's literally carrying her student history with her into this new phase of her education. It's been such an honor to watch her grow up. I hope she has what she needs. 

What Games Say

One of the things I will deeply miss when Quinn leaves for college at the end of August is our regular evening games. 

It's not every night, but it's almost any night I ask. The game the two of us play most often is Boggle. Sometimes we do Scrabble, or Cribbage. Other favorites when there are more players around are Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Concept, Code Names, Just One, Spite and Malice, and Point Salad.

Much of the entertainment for me and Quinn when we play Boggle is adding to our word card. Nearly every round we spot something that sounds like it could be a word, and we check online at the end of the game. Some are easy to remember for no apparent reason, like DAP (which is a form of dip fishing), and others we absolutely never remember if they are allowed or not. We check everything against the online Scrabble dictionary, and after looking up the same few words over and over we started making lists on a card. One side of the card is legal words (like PAC, SLOE, and EFT) and the other side are things we always want to be words that are not (like POC, LIM, and HAR). 

We laugh a lot, and we discover many new things during Boggle. Quinn recently started learning all the variations on the spellings of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which is a treasure trove of short words that the game allows (like BETH, TAW, and MEM). We know many forms of currency around the world thanks to Boggle.

Far and away the most interesting things I've learned while playing games with my kids over the years, is simply seeing how their minds work, and how their thought processes differ (or don't) from my own. 

The most vivid example of this in my memory was when Ian and I taught the kids how to play Monopoly at the family cottage. They were young, and the days are long up north and perfect for sprawling kinds of activities. We thought Monopoly was the kind of thing they should experience at least once, but we warned them up front that it was a mean sort of game. We didn't expect them to like it, but it's referenced enough in the culture at large that we thought they should try it.

We proceeded to play the weirdest game of Monopoly I've every experienced, because nobody got a monopoly anywhere on the board, so it became rent controlled. There were no houses or hotels to spike prices. My kids wanted to own collections of assorted property colors and each have their own railroad, etc., so everyone continued to affordably circle the board until we'd passed Go enough to break the bank and we had to stop. It was fascinating and rather heartening.

Anyway, that game gave me a glimpse into my children's possible relationships to money. Quinn likes rules. She had no interest in bending any during the game. If I could not pay rent on one of her properties, that was too bad. Aden, on the other hand, could not abide anyone suffering, so she would slip me money in order to pay rent to Quinn and expect nothing in return. Mona could not tell the difference between $200 and $200,000. Her approach to money in the game was pure chaos. The whole thing made me laugh because I told them when I am old if I have to rely on the three of them, Quinn should be in charge of my bills, Aden should decide when to pull my plug, and Mona will keep things interesting but should be in charge of nothing. Those assessments have shifted a bit as my children have become adults, but some of it's still apt.

The latest game we've been playing is called So Clover (which I think is supposed to sound like "So clever"). Each person gets a small board in the shape of a four-leaf clover, and you arrange four cards on it into a square. Each side of the square has two words and you have to write a word above each pair that will relate to them or connect them in some way. Once you've completed your board, you mix up the cards, add a decoy card, and then hand it all over to the other players who have to see if they can reassemble the board the way you had it.

To do this, you have to have a sense of how that person thinks. It's a little like Code Names, which changes depending on who your partner is and you have to rely on your shared knowledge to create meaningful clues. My kids know, for instance, that coming up with references to video games will not spark anything for me at all. Or if I'm playing with Aden I can reference Star Trek, but with Quinn that would get us nowhere.

The other night we did a round of So Clover that I found fascinating. Maybe because the two of us play so many word games together, Quinn knew intuitively how all of my clues worked. For example, I connected the pair of words "Hammer" and "Dreams" with "Nails." She kept insisting (correctly by my way of thinking) that a hammer would dream of nails. Mona and Aden kept taking the card back off and telling her that was insane. What kind of maniac would see Hammer and Dreams and write Nails? It was taking them so long to solve my board that they eventually agreed to a hint, and I told them to listen to Quinn, who put it together in seconds.

Aden, who I usually think I understand rather well, had an approach to this game I could not fathom. She didn't try to connect pairs of words, she simply found a clue that applied to each one independently. So for the words "Raft" and "Spicy" she put "Water." Her thinking was you need water for a raft, and you also drink water when eating spicy foods. My brain could compute almost none of her clues, but Mona seemed to get them. 

Like the long ago game of Monopoly, Quinn was logical, Aden was creative, and Mona was unpredictable. It made for a very entertaining game night.

I love seeing different people's strengths and priorities while playing games. In Settlers of Catan, Mona will always go for The Longest Road card. She doesn't even care if she wins, as long as she gets and retains that card as a point of pride. Quinn likes things that line up neatly. Aden will often take a purely sentimental tack and finagle it into a win. If it's a game that centers on pure strategy and Ian's playing, the rest of us seldom have a chance.

It's also enlightening to realize what gaps in experience others have that you make assumptions about. When I was growing up, my family and my Uncle Joe's family used to celebrate New Year's Eve together, and there was a different theme every time. One year we played a homemade version of Wheel of Fortune, and in addition to the kind of confusion only my dad could bring to any game, my mom and her brother were shocked to discover that none of their children knew the name of our great-grandmother. We uncovered all the letters of her name and still couldn't solve the puzzle. It had never occurred to my mom or uncle that we didn't know the name of their beloved grandmother. (But then, I also remember when someone asked my grandfather what his grandparents' names were, and he just said, "Grandma and Grandpa." He honestly didn't know.)

Word games always make my mom feel self-conscious, even though Quinn and I assure her the number of times the words POO and PEE show up in Boggle is embarrassing and she's perfectly capable of finding those, but she still won't play with us. She'll only play number based games involving cards or tiles.

Any game where I might need graph paper makes me glaze over, and makes me think of an episode of Gravity Falls where Dipper tries to explain how to play "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" and his sister whines, "This is like Homework: The Game!"  

My dad seldom went a week without doing a crossword puzzle. I have one in ink on my refrigerator that he didn't quite complete. I found it among his papers after he died. I tried to make him a crossword puzzle once when I was in second grade, because he loved them so much and I wanted to make him happy. I had zero idea of how they worked, though, and he had to hand it back to me explaining that the clues had to lead to words that overlapped properly, not the random mess I had made. He was very sweet about it. 

Crosswords summed up a lot about my dad. He liked clever use of language, and knowledge of both past and current events. It was an activity both solitary and neat and came in a newspaper. I used to snuggle up to him on the couch or in bed and try to help, but I was useless. I remember once the two of us puzzling over a clue about Newton, and both of us assumed it had to do with Sir Isaac Newton, but as other words came together, my dad exclaimed it was Wayne. Wayne Newton. Wayne seemed like a significant step down, history-wise, and we really laughed.

I find Sudoku puzzles relaxing. I have them stashed in glove compartments and in gig bags and on shelves and tables around the house. If they really help stave off dementia, I should be in good shape for a while.

Online I like to do the Wordle, Connections, the Mini, and Strands. Quinn and I regularly compare notes on how we did with those Times puzzles at the end of the day. We commiserate over how the Mini resets on a different schedule than the other games. The things I find easy in Connections are usually the things Quinn found hard, and vice versa. Solitary games like these feel like private interaction between me and the person who designed the puzzle. There's usually at least one category in the Connections where I scoff a bit, and feel like the game maker somehow knows and were maybe going for that reaction.

The dog just likes fetch/keep-away, and a little bit of wrestling. She has board-game-blindness and will happily tromp over whatever my kids and I are trying to play to seek affection.

I've been trying to remember what games Ian and I used to play before we had kids and everything shifted to include them. I don't know if when it's just us again what will feel right. I have such a specific rhythm of playing Boggle with Quinn that I don't know if I want to do it without her. It may become something I wait to do at holidays when she's in town.

Is it odd that when picturing the imminent empty nest that I imagine missing Boggle nights the most? Probably not, when I remember that playing games says very little about the actual games. They are about connection and time and humor and love. Losing that puzzle piece from our daily home life will be rough.

 

 

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

Some metaphors write themselves

We have had a crow saga happening at our house.

Early last week there was a big wind storm in our area, and we think it knocked a crow's nest from one of the trees out front. Not sure. All I know is I was the only person home one afternoon, and I discovered a crow sitting on our front steps. I was concerned it was hurt or injured. It didn't look quite right. 

Turned out it was just young. Young enough that its eyes were still rather blue, and its tail and wings were mostly pin feathers.

I left a message with the local humane society. I put out a dish of water on the steps. I called a neighbor across the street who loves animals to see if she could keep an eye on it while I was at work for a bit, and she promised to help keep it safe.

I got a call back the next day from the humane society. We talked about how the wind storm had displaced many small animals. We talked about West Nile Virus, and I told them how last summer we brought a crow in that wasn't doing well near my store. My middle daughter is good with birds and scooped that crow up in a sheet and held it as we drove to the animal rescue. She said it was startling how little it weighed. That bird died of West Nile.

They told me as long as the parents overhead were making a racket, to just give the young crow some space. If the parents stopped caring, then we should bring it in.

The bird managed to hop to the side of the house, along our fence, and eventually up the back steps where it settled in near the gate. I discovered it there when I parked my car after work, and I went around the other side and propped the gate open. I figured it might be safer in our yard than in the alley.

The baby crow eventually hopped onto our deck. The parents made an angry fuss every time we leaned too close to our windows to watch it. We put out water and nuts. We watched it hop to different spots on the deck. I told the same neighbor where it was and asked if she could maybe peek inside the fence once in a while since we were leaving the next morning for our cottage in Michigan. She said of course.

But the next morning we found it dead just under the deck. There were signs of a scuffle in the overgrown grass. There were black feathers scattered about near the stairs. I told the neighbor there was no longer anything to check. The parents were no longer shouting at us when we stepped into the yard.

While walking the dog before hitting the road, I discovered a second young crow dead in the front garden. It was mostly hidden by weeds. I don't know how long it was there, but by the time we returned after our Memorial Day weekend trip, the bodies of both young crows were gone. Nature can be cruel, but efficient.

Then a couple of days ago, there was a third baby crow on the front porch. This one was simply sitting on a maple log next to our swing. We think maybe having spent the night under the porch light might have helped keep it safe.

It eventually hopped slowly down the front steps, along the side yard, and ended up by the gate just like the first crow. We propped the gate and let it in. It hung out on the chairs on the deck. It explored the table. It practiced taking small "flights" from the seat of a chair to the back of it. For a little while it looked like it was trying to fly up the garage wall and perch on the paintings of plants there. 

At one point late in the day, it made a valiant attempt to fly from the back of a chair to the deck railing about three feet away. It sort of made it, but then overshot the railing enough to land in the side garden below. It hopped about, then climbed the stairs and settled into one of the chairs again.

My oldest daughter decided to put all the backyard lights on, and sleep on the couch in the family room to keep an eye on the small crow. We didn't want anything bad to happen to this last baby.

Yesterday evening I watched it fly all the way from the deck railing across the yard about 15 feet to the fence. Before we went to bed we couldn't find it anymore, although the parents still made a lot of noise if we opened the back door.

This morning, the crows were noisy. As I walked the dog, I finally spotted the baby crow at the top of a mangled looking apple tree we have next to our fence. It was looking as wobbly and goofy as it had practicing how to move on our deck, but now it was in a tree. A second pair of crows appeared, and cawed up a storm along with the first pair seeming to encourage me and my dog to move along. 

We haven't seen any of the crows since, which I think is a good sign. I think that baby made it.

Three little birds leaving the nest. High stakes.

My three little birds are home for the summer and they are fine, but I feel sometimes like I'm hovering around them like the crow parents (although I hope less loudly). The crow parents were observant, but they never actually swooped all the way down to their babies. They watched. They made their presence known. They cared. I care.

My first high school friend to have a baby asked my dad once when the nightmares about something happening to the baby finally stop, and he said, "They don't."

I'm excited for my kids as they head into the world. I see the one at college addressing challenges and I'm proud of her. I see the one taking a different path taking steps forward and back and I know she will figure things out. The youngest is looking at colleges but with no particular major in mind. It will be fascinating to see where she ends up.

I love them all more than my heart can take sometimes. They all have wobbly and goofy moments.

And with luck our nest won't blow down and they can always find a home here. 

Watching those little crows in our yard and seeing their anxious parents circling above was hard. But that last baby making it to the top of the apple tree, and I'm assuming finally flying off into the world, has left me with great hope. For birds both near and far.

Moving On and Up and Out

There's this funny sense many people have that parenting means getting your kids to 18, and then you're essentially done. Sure, there's usually college to get them through, and being available to help get them on their feet out in the world, but otherwise, you know. . . Done.

Not so much though. Legally, I guess if I thought of any of my kids as a burden or a menace, I could wave goodbye when they technically hit adulthood and not look back. But that's insane. There are still things to teach and hugs to give and traumas that wrench at your heart as if their suffering is your own. 

My oldest is 21, and she delayed starting college because of Covid, but she's now a couple of years in and her new life living in dorms has its ups and downs even though she likes her school. Last year she worked at a summer camp over break and wasn't home much, but this year she came home for nearly the whole summer break.

My middle kid is 19, and until recently was living at home since graduating high school a semester early, and she wasn't interested in college. She's spent the last year or so applying for jobs and working on sewing plushies for her Etsy page, but she recently began an apprenticeship at a tattoo parlor that is opening up across the street from our violin store and is excited about having real direction.

My youngest is 16 and in her junior year of high school. Although she's technically the only kid at home we're responsible for, often she's the one that seems to need us the least right now. 

When my oldest left for college a couple of years ago, the room she shared with her sister essentially ceased to be her room. It's not a big room, so the idea of expecting its remaining occupant to be limited to just a small part of it when nobody was on the other side was unrealistic. But that meant when my oldest came home from college in June, the best place for her to stay was in a small guest space on the first floor that we call "the nook."

By the mid-summer, however, the middle kid with the room to herself upstairs, moved into our Airbnb above the violin store. She wants to be more independent, and we still want to support her while she's working on her education (even if it's unconventional), so we figured this would work out well. She'll be living across the street from the tattoo place, and in lieu of rent we're putting her in charge of all the building chores (shoveling, mowing, weeding, cleaning the halls and teaching studio, etc.) and she'll get experience paying her own utility bills and budgeting for food. I'm glad she'll be close for a bit.

With the room at home empty, I offered to paint it and help rearrange it to the needs and tastes of the oldest kid. I know she'll only be there during school breaks, but it made me sad that she has been feeling less a part of our home. We picked out a nice new color for the walls, and I got the whole room finished over a couple of nights. We found a new dresser, rug, and curtains, and moved over a couple of bookcases and a desk from her youngest sister's room. And we hung art! That's always my favorite part of setting up a new room. We even got a print by one of her former teachers framed as an early birthday present. The room looks great, and it feels like her own.

(Here are the girls helping paint their room when we first moved into the new house. I split the room and let them each pick their own color for their half. The new single color is a very pale blue that helps open up the room a lot.)

The youngest kid turned down my offer to paint her room, too, but did need a new light fixture, and agreed to some new furniture. She requested a night stand, and a better system for storing and displaying her things, so we ended up assembling one of those walls of cubby box shelves that looks nice. Those things, along with a new small bookcase that better matches the other furniture and a new rug, have given her room a nice update.

We did a whole musical chairs thing with the beds. When the oldest went to college we threw away her mattress and replaced it with one guests would like better. She didn't like the new mattress, so she kept her bed frame and took the middle kid's mattress, while the youngest kid didn't like anything about her bed, so she got the middle kid's bed frame and the newer guest mattress. 

We also sorted all the stuffed animals. That was more involved than you might imagine, because the oldest kid is deeply sentimental, the middle kid is practical, and the youngest is somewhere in between. The piles of what to keep, what belonged to whom, what to give away, etc. got some people rather teary, to the point where I offered to simply scoop up some things to put in storage for another time. The emotional line between being an adult and a child is as fuzzy as a stuffed bunny sometimes, especially when standing in a space where you've experienced being both.

All the shifting about and moving things around has been interesting and odd. Dropping my oldest off at her dorm for the first time a couple of years ago was hard. I was leaving her somewhere far from me for the first time, and I didn't like it, even though I knew it was good for all of us. We found a new way to live that didn't include her being around. But then she was back for months and we developed a whole routine with her being involved in daily life again, and with her at school once more I've had to get used to her being gone all over. 

By comparison, the middle kid completely moving out with little chance she'll ever live under this roof again, has barely been noticeable. During the summer she was over to continue binge watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel with me and her sister each night as usual. She sometimes makes her own meals out of our fridge when she visits. So far she's got the best of both worlds, where she can hang out with her family like a kid when it suits her, and then go home to her apartment and do things her own way when she wants to be an adult. I'm jealous. I've always thought it would be ideal to be able to visit with my relatives without the complication of someone needing to be away from home to do it. I would love to go to dinner with my mom at her house, but still sleep in my own bed that night. I'm glad my own kid gets to do that.

With the oldest back at college, and the middle kid in her own space, we're down to one child at home. And she's the quietest, least conspicuous of the three. She's had an uptick in after school activities, so there is some chance to talk as we drive her places. She's still in charge of making dinner for the family from a meal kit a few nights a week, and sometimes she'll use the computer in the dining room, but otherwise we don't see her much. I feel as if the transition in a couple of years to me and my husband being empty nesters won't be as much of a shock as I feared. 

In the meantime, there is always another thing to manage with kids whether they are home or not: Trouble with health insurance and prescriptions, banking questions, arranging rides, coordinating errand schedules, figuring out dental appointments, replacing lost retainers, helping start a car that won't run, etc. Not the most warm and fuzzy bits of parenting, but all ways of being connected even after kids technically become adults. We can still be helpful. We can still be a safe place to land.

The lovely thing is to learn that my kids still want that connection even when they have other choices. My oldest was recently back for a few days because she was homesick, and our neighborhood is really fun at Halloween. She was happy to be in her updated room. She drew out both of her sisters and I was able to spend time with all three kids together. I used to worry that when my middle kid moved out that we'd seldom see her, but she regularly invites me along when she makes a run to the fabric store or Home Depot. This gives me hope that even as we don't see the youngest much at the moment, that we will still warrant visits when she moves on in the future. 

I'm kind of excited to imagine the next stage of our lives where Ian and I can make plans primarily around just each other again, without kids as the primary focus. It will be interesting to use our house in a different way, and figure out what we eat when we're only two people, and travel places without kids. 

But not quite yet. (I'm glad it's not quite yet.)