Agony of the Empty Nest

“Hold him a little longer, Rock him a little more, Tell him another story, you’ve only told him four; Let him sleep on your shoulder, rejoice in his happy smile. He is only a little boy for such a little while.” Author Unknown

Sometimes I look at him and I just want to kiss one of his ears or touch his hair. He’s 19 but he is still very much my little boy. In my deluded world of motherhood, his ears and beautifully thick hair have yet to catch up to his 6 foot, 160 pound frame and are the only things that still resemble that little boy from years ago.

Today, five days before my husband and I move our second born back onto his college campus, Drew and I took a little side trip to the University of Maryland. Just shy of 40 minutes from our house, it is an easy thing to do. Drive towards the DC Beltway, head north a few miles and Boom! You are now where my “Fear The Turtle” co-ed considers the greatest place to live!

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about today’s excursion isn’t that this soon-to-be college sophomore is totally down to have his mom on campus alongside him, and that after this upcoming Saturday’s move to his fraternity house he will feel farther away than the mere 27 miles actually separating us, but that this child of mine, who like his father and most of the male population is a man of few words, is now full of chatter this afternoon. Buy him pizza from his favorite College Park joint and it’s as if everything Drew has philosophically considered in his short 19 years is worthy of sharing with mom. Who knew?

An impromptu trip to the Sigma Chi house to rescue four blue Adirondack rockers bound for the dumpster turned out to be the impetus for one of those special mother/son interactions. On campus a few days early with Drew who is clearly at ease in familiar surroundings, stuffing well-worn chairs into the family SUV, I realize that we are surrounded by a bunch of students and their parents on what evidently is Freshman Move-In Day. I instantly know their pain.

Across campus, I watch parents hug and kiss their freshmen goodbye and prepare to walk away. A few stragglers are still picking through the throngs of Terrapin spirit wear but I know all too well that this trip to the student union is only procrastination. A diversion from the final act of the week. The hug, the good luck, the study hard, the good bye. So pitiful and yet so incredibly obvious. And though I have done this same dance called the freshman launch twice already, I would like to tell these unsuspecting parents that next year it won’t be so bad. Yet I would be lying. Twelve months ago, I did this same walk a second time. Miraculously, I got 22 ½ miles away before the tears flowed like the Nile unlike the very first launch of his sister when I barely made it around the campus corner to the nearest martini bar to start spilling. The thing is, I now know that it never gets any easier no matter how many times you must leave one of your kids behind.

Holding it together for the benefit of your child, maybe because you’re half afraid he or she will come crawling back home if you, the adult, should happen to come unglued but also half afraid that your now adult child might actually opt to never return home again. After all, the youngest has already established that college is the greatest place to be!

I hate transitions. I hate goodbyes. Even when I know that the goodbyes aren’t forever. But mostly I hate that I truly didn’t realize that the two children I brought into this world were ultimately destined to one day permanently fly the nest beyond semester and summer breaks. Surely I knew that they would leave, didn’t I? And before they both were just a twinkle in their dad’s and my eyes wasn’t I okay with just being in existence with my husband? Wasn’t life good before kids?

You see I have come to the conclusion that there are two very different issues at work here. One, the leaving of the babies from home. Two, as another mother recently lamented, that once our firstborns and their siblings begin embarking on life, we are left alone with just the husband after everyone has decided to fly the nest. Gasp! Not to make light of this conversation, but she was truly terrified of being left alone with her husband after all these years, and quite frankly, I was beginning to see why.

How could those cute little munchkins have clouded the marriage bed to this point? Because I actually have yet to begin to see how life goes on beyond having the existence of these beautiful and bright creations around me at all times, I understand how terrifying this stage is. On the most basic side, I have let the two butterflies out of the cage and am left with a sex starved man who now thinks it’s time to cash in.

I am immediately reminded of a sweet scene in the 2006 movie, “Failure to Launch” where Matthew McConaughey as the overgrown and very much still at home thirty-something son is trying to comfort his mom played by Kathy Bates about his upcoming move. When she confesses her fear of being left behind with his dad who is planning on turning his son’s bedroom into the “naked room”, she isn’t sure what she will do once her son leaves the nest, leaving her with a potentially unclothed husband all these years later. Her son tries to soothe her concerns with a simple, “well, you’ll just figure it out, Mom.”

So as my husband starts to get that sideways look like he may finally have hit the love jackpot, my tears begin to fall. Legitimate tears but still an insult to this man. I know all too well that both babies will never return to the nest quite the same. They will never be just mine again. They are now their own beings. No longer still at home, I feel stupidly blindsided that they are actually gone and all that’s finally left is just the husband and me.

Still there is something so incredibly hard about having two kids leave at the same time. His sister a few weeks earlier for grad school in Manhattan, and even with the promises of a shopping Mecca and many girls’ weekends, I still can’t reconcile the glaring fact that she really is gone this time. And now, to add insult to injury, my baby boy can’t seem to get back on campus fast enough.

Oh, I’ll go to college football games and maybe catch a glimpse of my son. Or maybe not, depending on just how much fun those Greek tailgates are that day. Our daughter will return home for holidays and long weekends. Or maybe not, depending upon what other attractive invitations she receives to explore other worlds. At least back home, I will gladly share that bottle of cabernet with my husband, knowing that it may just be the key to finding that long lost couple we once were. Or maybe not, depending upon if I ever again become capable of finding that woman I was pre-motherhood.

More than likely, most of us had very normal romantic relationships years ago with these men from whom we secretly now are running. Where did the sexy couple lose it? In the diaper aisle? At the SAT tutor? In the DMV during the learners’ permit process? Regardless, where the hell did the “we”, who promised each other till death do us part, depart? And while many of my contemporaries also in this stage of life are opting out of the “for better or for worse”, how do the rest of us continue on, knowing that maybe, just maybe, the best part of life has already passed us by?

As our children grow up and leave, my greatest fear is that life will never, ever be as good again. My Mother-in-law many years ago confessed that when her kids had grown older than mine, who at that time were only two and five, life had never been much fun afterwards. After all the raising was done and her middle son, now my husband, was successfully launched, had his siblings’ less than stellar experiences of alcoholism and teen pregnancy clouded her perception of life? With her husband deeply buried in his career, was she absolutely right that eventually everyone laments that after the kids are grown, the couple dynamics can’t be resurrected, rendering everything just not much fun anymore?

Could that really be true? I am reminded however, that each bittersweet time we have crossed over a new experience, the fact remains that my daughter’s college graduation wasn’t less than her preschool one and that those first words of “Mama” and first wobbly steps taken, haven’t made any of the subsequent accomplishments of my 19 and 22 year olds any less momentous.

Maybe that ‘s how this melancholy mama and all the other sad mamas tonight are instructed to live. To just try and figure it out as we go along. To hope and to continue to dream for our kids, knowing that our babies will continue to have milestones but also that they will always have their mamas in their hearts.

So five days before my youngest moves back to school, I can be a little downhearted. And I can still hide in closets (again) while I hyperventilate over the thought of those baby ears going off to leave me. I will always know how to channel his smiles and his “living the dream, mom, just living the dream” comments when asked about his day even if this semester, once again, our interactions are by text and not face to face.

Tonight, as another launch date creeps closer, I jokingly tell Drew that this year I am going to have to schedule some lunch dates with him. “There is just no other way to survive life without your smile,” I tell him.

He turns to me and sweetly says, “I’m not afraid of you coming to campus, mom. Just don’t show up on a Saturday. Or Friday after 3. Or maybe Sundays before 3. But you can come for lunch any other time. Just let me know.”

Yes, Drew, I will let you know. Those precious few moments with you I will most definitely reserve in advance. Guaranteed. And just like that, this mama will once again try and let go. And she will treasure whatever time you give her in your “living the dream” future.

And years down the road, when those four Adirondack rockers are pointed west into the sunset, many nautical miles from their wild fraternity porch beginnings, alongside my husband, an overgrown fraternity boy himself, I'll still be smiling about that late August afternoon when one usually quiet male allowed his mama to come to campus and share pizza and a conversation with her grownup Sigma Chi baby—five days from another campus move-in.