Austin360 blogs > TV Blog > Archives > 2004 > August > 29
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Notes from an empty nest
*NOTE TO READERS: I promised, when I began writing the daily TV blog, that I wasn’t going to write about my personal life. I didn’t want it to become a diary filled with embarrassing revelations.
But television isn’t on my mind right now, even though I’m preparing to hunker down for four days of watching the Republican Convention. I wrote this little essay about what IS on my mind, and I hope some of you will understand and appreciate the brief diversion …*
This is the time of year when the scent of freshly sharpened pencils usually wafts through our house.
Colored folders, stacks of notebook paper and a brand-new (but soon to be smelly) gym bag are scattered about — along with fresh hopes for a happy and brilliant school year.
But this back-to-school year is different. There’s no eau de pencil, no school supplies. Instead, there’s a big suitcase and boxes to be packed, a one-way airplane ticket has been bought.
My baby boy is flying off to college in Boston. He’ll be gone by Labor Day and won’t be home until Christmas.
I’ll visit him in October for Parents’ Weekend, but he’s opting to spend Thanksgiving with a cousin in New Hampshire rather than fight crowded airports for two days at home before final exams arrive in early December.
So this is an exciting but not totally happy time in our house.
It’s the end of an era. I won’t be there to welcome him home after the first day of classes. My husband and I will be cell-phone parents, straining to read vocal intonations from a thousand miles away.
For the first time, I won’t get to meet his teachers or his new friends. I won’t get to check on homework or beg for details about his social life. I won’t spend weekends driving around Texas searching for cross-country track meets in the middle of nowhere.
And for the first extended time in 18 years, I won’t be able to sneak into his room and watch him sleeping.
He’s on his own, and so am I. He’ll do fine, but will I? The proverbial empty nest is going to be painfully empty — except for the dog, who will mourn in loud, obnoxious, houndlike fashion.
My husband and I work, so we won’t be sitting around wondering what to do with ourselves. We’re planning to have a more active social life with our friends. We’ll be available, now that we won’t be waiting for a car to pull in the driveway at curfew. Or the phone to ring with a semi-plausible excuse.
Parenting is a series of goodbyes — from weaning to school to driver’s licenses to college. You hope some hellos will be sprinkled among the goodbyes, and you hope the boy who leaves will become the man he seemed destined to be. And you hope he deals with the separation better than we will.
We’ve done our best, we love him more than he’ll ever know. And we’re proud he’s starting a new life on his own.
But we’re struggling with this goodbye, and so are parents everywhere, quiver-chinned moms and dads packing suitcases and buying one-way tickets to far away places. My best friend Missy, who lives in Washington, D.C., went through this trauma two years ago, so I asked for advice. Her reply is worth repeating:
“It’s tough sledding for a while. You just tuck your kid up under a sweet spot in your heart and move along, bringing him out when he’s around and keeping him safe while he’s gone.”
Maybe if I sharpen a few pencils …
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