Home for the Holidays

"I'm dreaming tonight,
of a place I love,
even more than I usually do..."



It's been a year of change and growth for our family. Not that every year isn't important, but 2017 feels particularly significant. One daughter studied abroad for the spring semester, and the other started college in the fall. Todd and I have started learning how to be "just us" again. For the first time since the youngest was a baby, we've spent more time apart as a family than together. Now, with the holidays looming, this momentous year is drawing to an end.

Like so many milestones in 2017, this holiday season is bittersweet.  We’ve pulled the Christmas decorations down from the attic, but except for lights out front, everything is still in boxes.  In the coming days, I will set out preschool crafts and handmade decorations, favorite photos and the crèche we got from my mom years ago.  It's going to sting a little to do this process alone, but clearly, this house is not going to decorate itself.  Judging by the way December seems to be on fast forward, Christmas is coming whether I'm ready or not.

We always buy a live tree, and since the girls were little we’ve visited the same Christmas tree farm. Buying a tree is a process – well, my family would probably describe it as an ordeal. Someone (ahem: me) is a little particular about her trees. This year, Todd and I will choose the tree alone, leaving just Todd to smile and nod as I debate the merits of one giant tree over another. None of us are ready to give up the tradition of decorating the tree together, so while the lights will go up in a week or so, the treasured ornaments will wait until the youngest arrives home right before Christmas.

With this potent mix of nostalgia and anticipation, it's hard not to get caught up in the idea of the perfect Christmas. In my fantasy, the holiday season looks like one long Hallmark commercial.  Rosy-cheeked daughters arrive home from college with smiles and hugs.  The kitchen table is once again full.  Dinners are delicious and Martha Stewart-worthy. Decorations are carefully arranged on the tree, while holiday music plays softly in the background.  Everyone snuggles on the couch, sipping hot chocolate, as we watch A Christmas Story for the hundredth time.  On Christmas morning, we wear matching pajamas and enjoy homemade Christmas treats for breakfast, while the girls delight in the stockings we still stuff with care.  There is laughter and love and happy contentment.

 

The reality is that our girls will arrive home as if from battle, mentally drained and physically exhausted.  Finals and end-of-semester papers will have taken their toll after weeks of too little sleep and too much stress. Odds are pretty good that at least one child will be recovering from whatever crud was making its way around campus.  Cuddling on the couch will be interrupted by two very needy pets who insist on getting their fair share of attention. Since I am a master procrastinator, the baking will not be finished, and I'll still be wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. There will be smiles and hugs, but there will also be grumbling and squabbling, and last-minute shopping, because real life is not a Hallmark commercial. And we have never, not ever, had matching pajamas.

It's a little hard to let go of that dream, isn't it? The Hallmark version of the holidays looks so pretty on the outside. But as easy and carefree as the fantasy would be, I'll take my real, messy, wonderful family, with all their quirks and flaws, any day.  It's those people that I love and cherish, and whether the holiday season brings joy or frustration, laughter or tears, we will all be together.  That is the greatest gift this holiday season, one which is without measure.

The New Normal

We are more than two months into the "empty nest" phase of life, and with that has come a lot of growth, introspection and heavy sighing. Of all the adjustments I've made, one of the hardest has been dinner time.  The kitchen is the hub in our house - both girls did homework at the kitchen table, and frequently we were putting the finishing touches on dinner while one or both daughters scurried to finish the last of their work for the day.  Throughout the years, no matter what evening activities came up, we did our best to eat together - no cell phones, no television, just the four of us sharing a meal and some company. It was a commitment, one that Todd and I did not take lightly.   I'm not going to lie - plenty of nights there wasn't a whole lot of chit chat from our younger family members. But it was familiar, and comforting, and had been our routine for 20 years. It was one of the ways we connected as a family.

So it was only natural that when our youngest left for college, I found food shopping, cooking, and mealtimes challenging. My grocery cart, which had once been filled to the top with things like Kind Bars, pretzel Goldfish and the makings for homemade granola, now included only a single loaf of bread and a couple chicken breasts.  Thinking about dinner time without the girls was even worse.  My fears included everything from how I would prepare food for two people to worrying that we would start eating on TV trays while watching Wheel of Fortune.  After all, it was only us.

Unspoken was my deepest, darkest fear - what if we didn't have anything left to say?  What if, after years of discussing school projects and the next day's schedule, we had run out of things to talk about? What if, in those nonstop years of mom-life, I had become (GASP) boring?

Those first couple weeks were tough.  Deciding what to eat - a decision that had long been guided by what everyone was "in the mood for" - came down to what sounded palatable.  Sitting at the nearly-empty table with a golf-ball sized lump in my throat made eating a challenge. We ate a LOT of leftovers.   Through trial and error, we found out what dishes froze and defrosted well (Italian: good! Mexican: not so much.). Some nights, when we were both working late, dinner was scrambled eggs and toast, despite those two lonely chicken breasts sitting in the fridge. We navigated around each other in the small kitchen, unused to the freedom of open space. Besides the sting of the empty seats at the table, it just felt ... odd.

As the days turned into weeks, though, a new normal began to take shape.  I'm a firm believer that given enough time, people can get used to anything, and dinner time at the Palmer house was no exception. We've fallen into a routine of sorts... chatting in the den while dinner simmers, or one of us hanging out in the kitchen, cocktail in hand, while the other does meal prep. It took some getting used to cooking for two, but we still don't own TV trays, and almost every night dinner is at our kitchen table.

Occasionally, one of the girls will call during dinner and it is almost like old times.We put them on speaker phone and for a few minutes we can pretend that all of us are sitting down together. When the phone call ends, I sigh and look wistfully at their empty spot.

But the new normal kicks back in, and suddenly we are back to just us, where the kitchen is a little quieter, but the biggest fear, the one I didn't dare speak aloud, proved to be completely unfounded.  Although our dinner discussions no longer include "20 Questions" style grilling of teenage girls, it turns out we have a lot to talk about. Apparently, I'm not boring (yay me!), at least not to my husband of 28 years. We laugh a lot. Thirty years of inside jokes means that often one of us will start to speak and the other will burst out laughing, because we know what's coming next.

Unlike the occasional punchline at dinner, we don't know what's coming next. As old routines give way to new, I struggle to embrace the unknown even as I know, in my heart, that things will never be like they were. But as the "new normal" has shown me, I may not know what's coming, but the future is wide open, and it's up to me to embrace it.

What On Earth Are You Going to DO?

For more than a year leading up to my youngest daughter starting college, many of my casual conversations would start the same way. I’d be in Target, or the library, or out for coffee, and I’d bump into an acquaintance.  As the generalities got sorted through, the hellos and how-are-yous, the subject invariably came around to children.

  

A typical conversation went like this:

Well-Meaning Acquaintance (WMA): How old is your youngest daughter?

Me:  She’s a senior now.

WMA:  Wow!  A senior!  So she’s almost ready for college!

Me: I know!  It’s so exciting!

        (Loooooooong pause)

WMA: What on earth are you going to DO?

Ah, that gets right to the heart of it. What on earth WAS I going to do? For 20 years, my life had revolved around our girls.  From playgroups and Chinese preschool to room mom, from Girl Scout leader to booster club president, most of my activities and even some of my jobs revolved around parenting or children. It was interspersed with other things –growing my own business, writing, volunteering, and working.  But the heart of my life was raising two independent, strong, kind women, women who would have the confidence to leave home, to travel, to take the next step in a life filled with opportunities.

It was a job well done.

Ready or not, college was right around the corner.  SHE was ready.  I was not.  After a year of lasts (the last football game, the last school lunch packed, the LAST last day), a year of firsts was beginning. There were dorm room assignments, roommates, and college orientation, followed by list after list of things you absolutely must have to outfit the perfect dorm room.  Summer zoomed by in a blur of Target bags and Amazon Prime boxes, and before I could blink, it was time to start packing.

We got our oldest daughter settled into her dorm for her senior year, which by now was like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes.  And then, finally, it was the youngest’s turn.  We watched as she packed up her most beloved treasures, and the room she’d had since she was a baby grew empty. Bags and boxes morphed into Rubbermaid tubs. We were excited but nervous as we pulled onto the gorgeous campus, our faithful Big Blue van stuffed to the gills with all the things she might possibly need for her new life. Suddenly, it was here – freshman move-in.

A flurry of activities made the lead up to goodbye a little easier – moving in, unpacking and decorating, last-minute shopping trips and dinners out, and a beautiful convocation ceremony.  Those two days seemed to pass in a moment.  Before I knew it, I found myself standing in her doorway, the moment arriving so much sooner than I was ready. As I kissed my daughter goodbye at the door of her new home, and gave her the hug that would have to last for two months, I could barely get the words “I love you” out before the tears started.  The nest that I had nurtured and fostered and loved so passionately was now officially empty.

Although it had been coming for two decades, I was achingly aware that this was a moment of clear delineation, of “before” and “after.”  This wasn’t just a turn of the page, or the next chapter in my life. It was a whole different book. 

Now, with the literal closing of a door, my most important role for more than 20 years was done. Not that mothering is ever completely over. No matter what the age, you never stop being a mom.  But the real world, every day, “see you after school” life was finished.  Suddenly, I had been let go, or at the very least demoted, from what wasn’t just a job but a calling.

In the weeks since college drop off, I have drifted, unmoored from the life I’ve known for so long.  I’ve cried my way through grocery store trips and sighed heavily each time I’ve come home to an empty house.  And the answer to the question, “What on earth are you going to do?”  still goes unanswered.  I’m not quite done mourning. 

Soon, perhaps, I will discover what lies next, and in the meantime, I’m giving my old blog a new look and renewed purpose. I hope you’ll come along for the journey.