Quiet Time

It’s been almost five months since our son left for college and people continue to ask my husband and I what it’s like to be empty nesters. 98% of the time, our immediate response is “It’s reeeeeeally quiet.” I have become aware of sounds I don’t remember hearing before, like the refrigerator running, the clock ticking, or the furnace turning on. There are definite perks to being the only ones home, like having complete control over our schedules and eating cereal for dinner in our pajamas if that’s how we feel. But the quiet kind of gets to you. It feels almost 3-dimensional, like a tangible presence that follows you from room to room. I soon got into the habit of turning on music or the tv, just to hear some other noise besides the dog snoring peacefully beside me. When my husband has been home alone, he has done the same thing. Yes, that’s right, after years of complaining about how much noise our children made, we were actually seeking out background noise, anything to distract us from the constant reminder of our loneliness.

And then came my Netflix addiction. Shortly after Logan left in June, I started watching the series, The West Wing. After only a few episodes I was hooked. It was then I realized there were SEVEN seasons with 22 episodes per season (yes, that’s right--154 episodes). Well, I thought, it really doesn’t matter because I’m the queen of multitasking and think it’s so wasteful to just be folding laundry when I could be folding laundry and finding out what was happening with Josh and CJ and Toby and President Bartlet at the same time. Soon I was carrying my laptop with from room to room as I went about household tasks. Part way through the 3rd season, when I began taking my pc into the bathroom with me because I didn’t want to pause for 60 seconds, I realized I had a problem. I began to worry I was like the wife in Fahrenheit 451 who only wanted to spend time in the fantasy world of her parlor walls with the shallow, fictional characters there. Or the various characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation who were addicted to running holodeck simulations and couldn’t function in the real world.

Maybe I’m over-exaggerating a bit. I know what is real and what isn’t. Really. And it’s not like I don’t have enough to do to keep me busy. I have too many quilts to make and books to read and people to meet to ever feel bored. But I am beginning to understand that the background noise of music and the intrigue of a good TV series can’t hide or eliminate the fact that I am lonely, that I miss the company of my children. And somehow, simply acknowledging that fact has helped me. Now instead of thinking of the quiet as an absence of noise, I am learning to look at the quiet as a feeling of peace--peace in the knowledge that my children think of our home as a place of love and acceptance, that they want to return here and be with us when they can. I rejoice in the memories of a house full of family noises, I look forward to the future times when the noise of family togetherness will return, but for now I am embracing the sounds of our quiet nest.

Running Home

I ran a half marathon just over 5 weeks ago and feel like I’ve been running ever since. Since the race on Labor Day, I have travelled to 3 very different places--Puerto Rico, Minnesota, and Utah. When I returned from the last trip last week, I decided that it was time to take off the running shoes and stay home for a while. Within an hour of being in my quiet, childless home, I also realized that I had subconsciously scheduled these trips so close together for a good reason--to avoid having to feel the loneliness of this new phase of life.

Logically, I know it’s ok to feel lonely. I just don't like it. It makes me sad and depressed, and who wants to feel like that? So I've decided to see loneliness as a good thing. When I re-frame my sadness, I see that I feel lonely because I also know what it's like to feel loved. Some might say I'm avoiding reality, but I don't think so. I remember when my daughter started running cross country in high school and she learned that a hill wasn’t just a beastly thing to endure while running, but also an opportunity to grow stronger. Seeing it like that didn’t make the hill any shorter or less steep, but it did help create the motivation to push yourself upwards. So the fact that I know what it’s like to feel loved helps me to see loneliness as a way to increase my compassion and love for others.

My recent travels have also shown me that my definition of home has expanded to include far off places. In fact, I now see that “home” is really more of a feeling than a place. My home is here where I raised my family and live with my loving husband who can still make me laugh after 25 years; my home is in Utah where I went to college and where my sons are currently having both good and hard experiences (as only college can provide); my home is in Berlin where my daughter is looking for ways, every hour of every day, to serve people and teach them about God and Jesus Christ; my home is in Minnesota where I grew up and where my siblings still live and where there are autumn leaves of every hue that crunch when you walk on them and beautiful blue lakes around every corner; my home is in sunny St. George where my 84-year-old mom lives among the red rocks and desert landscapes.

I have lived long enough to realize that my definition of home will continue to morph as my life’s circumstances change, and I look forward to seeing what “home” will mean in the next phases of life. And I think that I will keep running and looking for new opportunities at the top of every hill.

Our First Guilt-free Getaway

So the nest has officially been empty now for nearly 3 months, and we have just celebrated our new phase of life by spending 5 days on the beautiful tropical island of Puerto Rico. We had decided to go in September after school had started to take our minds off the fact that we wouldn't be buying school supplies for our children and taking first-day-of-school pictures in our driveway with the kids and their loaded backpacks. That plan of distraction worked very well.

What I didn't do was check what the weather was like in Puerto Rico in September. After a very hot summer in the desert Southwest, I was already feeling ready for the cool autumn nights which had not yet made their appearance. And then we landed in San Juan, and within 5 minutes of being outside in 87 degree weather (with about the same humidity), I suspected I should have done a little more research, especially when I realized that "cooling off" at night meant that the temp would drop to 80. We spent our first afternoon there driving through and taking short hikes in the El Yunque rainforest (located just 20 minutes from our condo). The driving part was fine, but then we decided to hike to see a waterfall. The sign said it was a moderate level hike of .7 miles that would take 40 minutes each way. We laughed at that--being from Colorado the idea of .7 miles taking 40 minutes sounded ridiculous. We each carried a water bottle and set off. After hiking a fairly steep up and down path for about 25 minutes, I was completely drenched in sweat, as if I had already reached the waterfall and gone swimming there, and we were both more than half way through our water. As the heat and humidity were making me think about going native (as in: to wear nothing but a loin cloth), we decided to turn around and head back to the air-conditioned car. This is what I looked like by the time we got back:

The other thing I didn't research well enough was the phone coverage. I was told by my cell phone carrier that we would have phone coverage in Puerto Rico as it is part of the United States. But alas, when we arrived we turned on our phones, all that we saw was a horrifying "No Service" notification where the happy "Verizon 3G" should have been (I felt sooooo 20th century without it!). We did have internet at our condo, so we weren't completely out of touch. And since the point of the trip was to get away from the everyday things, that ended up not being all that bad. The worst part for me was being forced to communicate with my sons through such primitive means as emails and Facebook messages (#firstworldproblems). But it was gratifying to know that upon our return to the States and the land of cell phone coverage, they both sounded like they missed us too.

The best news of the trip, however, is that after spending 24 hours a day together for 5 days, my husband and I found out that we still love each other and like being together. Ok so we already knew that and didn't need to travel thousands of miles to a beautiful, tropical island be reminded, but it never hurts to have scientific proof.

Lost and Found

I remember when I first learned how to read a map in elementary school. I quickly figured out how to orient myself in relation to my house on North Chatsworth Street; our living room had a huge bay window where I could see the sun set over the woods in our backyard, so I knew that was west, which meant the front of my house was east. Armed with that knowledge, I could picture myself looking down at my house as if I were looking at a map.  All the elements of my child’s world became oriented by the directions of the compass—west of my backyard was Lake Josephine and the Dairy Queen, Emmett D. Williams Elementary School was just north of my house (only 2 blocks, but for some reason, I rode the bus) and my best friend’s house was five houses directly east of my front door on Lydia Drive. My church was farther away, to the south and east.  As I grew older and my world began to expand, my house remained at the center of my sense of direction, and learning to drive the many freeways of the Twin City metro area was relatively easy so long as I knew where I was in relation to my home.

When I left home for college in Utah Valley, the mountains became the anchor for my sense of direction, but I also still found it helpful to look at my city as if I were looking at a map, with me at the center. I’ve had many opportunities to travel in the last 30 years and learned that if I spent 5 minutes looking at a map and orienting myself mentally, I would always know where I needed to go. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I have been lost in the hundreds of new places I have travelled as an adult. When my husband and I travel together, we know that it usually works best if he drives and I navigate. I just sort of assumed that it was a gift of mine to always have a sense of direction and took it for granted that I could always count on that.

Lately, however, I have had a few experiences with a disturbing loss of my sense of direction. None of them were life-threatening or disastrous in any way, but they were none-the-less disconcerting. I travelled to Italy a few months ago with my husband and son and on our first day in Florence, I confidently led us on what I thought would be a 10-minute walk to the Duomo, only to end up 20 minutes later at the square in front of Santa Croce—in the complete opposite direction of our intended destination. We easily corrected our mistake, as Florence is not a large city, but I was a little shaken to find that I had been so wrong. And then last week, I was driving from St. George to Las Vegas to fly back to Colorado and was completely sure that I knew how to get back to the Rental Car return without my GPS navigation. I took the right exit off of the interstate, but after several blocks realized I was going in the opposite direction of where I needed to go. Again, not something terrible, but was for some reason very unsettling.

Upon reflection of these experiences, I realize that the disquieting part to me was the fact that I had counted on my sense of direction to always be there, and then, without warning, it failed me. Very much like the fact that my children, who have been my almost constant companions for the last 23 years (whether I wanted them to be or not), are not there anymore. Sure, they are just a text, phone call or email away, but it’s the lack of their physical presence that is disorienting. For my entire life, I have centered my sense of physical and emotional direction on my home, and now, though my home is in the same place, I must learn to re-orient myself. Which is hard, but definitely possible. So I will press forward, checking my maps a little more frequently and carefully, knowing that though I might wander off course occasionally, so long as I know the location of my home I will always find the way there.

Waiting for . . . what?

I feel like most of my life I have been waiting for something. When I was little I waited for exciting things—holidays (birthdays, Christmas, summer vacation) and first time experiences (being old enough to ride a bike, to stay home alone, or drive a car). And I waited for major life events to happen, like graduating from high school and college, getting a “real” job, getting married, and having children. Then when I had children, it started all over as I would wait for them to be born, wait for them to sleep through the night (I waited a reallllyyy long time for that!), roll over, eat solid foods, and take their first steps. I’d wait for them to be old enough for school, wait for them each day to come home from school, wait for summer vacations to visit relatives, wait for summer to finally be over so they could go BACK to school, wait for what seemed an eternity for the middle school years to finally be over, wait for them to make it through high school so they could get into the college of their choice.

Now that they are finally at the college of their choice (go Cougars!) and serving missions, far away from me, I find that I am waiting for time to pass so that I won’t miss them so much. Which has mostly worked. I’ve gotten used to the idea that the only one waiting for me when I come home each day is the dog (and he’s waiting very anxiously too). I’m getting used to buying less food and having more leftovers and doing less laundry. There are still times when I long to be with them, just to sit around and talk and laugh, to look them in the eye and tell them how wonderful they are.  They are my children, and I will always love and miss them when they are not near me.  I will wait patiently for the time when we can be together again.

But here I am in the present moment with a sense that I’m still waiting for something big to happen. When my kids were little, there were so many things that I felt like I didn’t really have time to do. My scrapbooking supplies have continued to grow, though the number of completed albums stopped completely a couple of years ago. I have made several quilts, but my fabric stash and planned future projects have multiplied alarmingly. I have always wanted to write the great American novel, but never felt like I had the energy or time required to do so. The pile of books by my bed has grown steadily larger in the last couple of years as I continue to put books there that I have intended to read but have only barely glanced at. So I guess I’m wondering, as I stand here on the verge of a new pattern of life, will things change? Will I finally have time for these things that I’ve been waiting to do? And of course the real question is what do I really even want to do now? 

I guess I will just have to wait and see….

Too close to the surface

It's official--we are now "empty nesters." We dropped off our son at his college dorm last Friday and drove home the next day. I didn't cry when we said goodbye, I made it through Spanish Fork Canyon (known by other departing parents as the Canyon of Tears) just fine, and all the way across the Rocky Mountains without shedding a tear. And then we came home. To an empty house. To a quiet house. To a house without children.

And then the tears came.

I knew I was not alone in my sorrow, though in the past my husband has not been nearly as "openly sentimental," shall we say, as I had been when our children left. But we had not been home even 24 hours when he asked me, "What if there's no purpose to life without children at home?"

That was the golden question. We sat behind a family with small children at church that day and I found myself starting to cry every time I looked at them. And at the end of church I kept looking for my son and then tearing up when I realized he wasn't there. Frankly, I was a mess. I needed to get a grip. Emotions were much too close to the surface and I didn't want to make everyone around me uncomfortable (i.e. "Why is Shireen curled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth and sobbing?"). There had been no tragedy in my life--just the fact that I love my children so much and miss them.

So I guess that the thing to do at this point is just accept what is. Feelings are close to the surface--accept it and know that I am normal. Though I should probably stay away from any YouTube videos with babies in them for a while unless I'm sure that no one is watching.

Empty Nest Syndrome is not a clinical condition

My youngest son leaves for college in a few days, and I've found myself on an emotional roller coaster the last few months, randomly weeping at sentimental tv commercials or videos of cute babies on YouTube. I've already gone through menopause, so I couldn't blame the hormones, and I had started to wonder if there was something seriously wrong with me.

So I did what every normal American does when they need to find out information--I looked up "empty nest syndrome" on Wikipedia (that ultimate source of all truth), where I read: "Empty nest syndrome is a feeling of grief and loneliness parents or guardians may feel when their children leave home for the first time, such as to live on their own or to attend a college or university. It is not a clinical condition." I am relieved to know that I will not need to be medicated or hospitilized now that my children are gone.

And then I read further: "Since a young adult moving out from his or her parents' house is generally a normal and healthy event, the symptoms of empty nest syndrome often go unrecognized. This can result in depression and a loss of purpose for parents, since the departure of their children from "the nest" leads to adjustments in parents' lives. Empty nest syndrome is especially common in full-time mothers." As I have been a "full-time mother" (what does that even mean? What does a part-time mother do when she's off of "work"???) ever since I gave birth to my first child 22 1/2 years ago, I guess that wandering aimlessly from room to room trying to remember just what exactly I need to do today (or find the list that tells me what to do) is perfectly normal.

Wikipedia also informed me that "Parents who experience empty nest syndrome often question whether or not they have adequately prepared their child to live independently." Does this include worrying whether he'll remember to eat lunch or if he'll ever go to bed before 4am? Or if he'll remember to do his homework and learn not to procrastinate until the last possible minute? How about wondering how many times a week he will eat vegetables? Or if he will spend all of his money in the first 2 months of school? I'm sure that with time, I will quit obsessing about the answers to these questions, especially when I realize he is 9 hours away and there's really nothing I can do about it anyway.

So I guess all of these feelings are normal, and I should be grateful to Wikipedia for saving me the bother of a trip to the doctor to ask why I find myself tearfully looking at random 4-year-olds and wondering just how my 4-year-old son turned into an 18-year-old college student without even asking my permission. I will try to remember this fact next week when we take him to school and see if that will help as we say goodbye and head home without him. It probably won't, but it might. Thankfully, we still have a dog at home...