We were new parents when we bought our house 24 years ago and settled our then-2-year-old son into his bedroom. The house seemed large and I remember wondering how the three of us would fill it.
The solution came organically. Over the years that followed, we added three more children to the mix. Our home was a sanctuary full of cuddles, bedtime stories, birthday parties and homework around the kitchen table. My challah rolls disappeared into little bellies the moment they emerged from the oven, and a full batch of chocolate chip cookies was devoured between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and midnight. It was exhausting, exhilarating, joyful and exasperating, and there was little time to think about anything more than keeping the fridge stocked and navigating the coming week.
In the flash of an eye, high school graduations arrived and, soon after, college departures. I dropped my son at an Ontario college, pulled away from the curb and drove the next two hours to the airport with tears streaming down my face. It was no easier when my twins graduated high school, though with three kids in college there was always someone on reading break or home for a quick visit.
We’re three in the house now and, as my youngest prepares for her departure in just 10 months, I spend a lot of time wondering how the years passed by so quickly. I walk into now-empty bedrooms and examine the photos my girls pasted to their walls, a brief capture of the friendships, parties, sleepovers and hikes that punctuated their teenage years. No one devours the challah buns or cookies anymore, so when I feel a baking blitz coming on, the treats go straight into the freezer. Though I’m still working, there’s a lot more time in my day and I long for the mothering that used to fill it.
Here’s what I miss: four kids collaborating over homework at the kitchen table. Their excitement as we planned family weekends away. Their enthusiasm for homemade macaroni and cheese. Their friends who wafted in and out of the house, demolishing banana chocolate chip bread and muffins as they fueled up for games of capture the flag, cheerleading practice, lacrosse and kickboxing. I miss the daily parenting activity.
We gave them roots and wings, and we couldn’t be prouder of the adults they have become and the focused direction with which they’re living their lives. But, even years after they left home, there are days when the quiet emptiness of the house continues to haunt me. “What’s next for you?” it asks. “Who are you if you’re not a mother, first?”
I’d be lying if I said I had all the answers, but there are definite bonuses to having an emptier nest. The house stays cleaner for longer, there’s less urgency to restock groceries and no competition for the washing machine. Responsible for fewer members of the family now, I reshuffled the house. One empty bedroom has become a sewing room while another houses the road bikes in winter, allowing hubby and I to pedal long virtual routes all over the world.
There’s something deliciously exciting about putting myself first after so many years of parenting. It’s been 26 years since I last had hours free to decide just how and where I wanted to spend them. I can visit faraway kids on a whim, chat on the phone with old friends sans interruption and add more fitness to my day. I’m going back to piano lessons, learning to play mahjong, exploring recipes and creating a new sense of order in my life. In some ways, empty nesting is liberating.
There are days when the bedrooms feel cavernous and the house whispers sadly to me about voices and laughter now silent. Around the kitchen table the conversation goes in circles: Sell the house? Downsize? What does the next chapter look like? We’ve been mulling these questions for a few years now and the answers are still as clear as mud.
What I’ve learned is that this empty nest is a journey, an ongoing process filled with a mixture of emotions. There are days I am grateful for the peace and quiet and enthralled by just how much I can get done, and there are other days when I feel bereft without my kids around, as though pieces of my heart have been shaved off with their departure.
On those sad days, I try to remind myself that a full house isn’t the only kind of beautiful house. The roots we planted are deep and, though my heart is scattered across the map, an empty nest gives me countless reasons to spread my wings, travel to my kids’ new homes and watch in sheer amazement as they accomplish great things. That is a salve for the soul.
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.
