Empty Nest

As of last week, Mark and I are empty nesters. Kind of. Last Sunday, we dropped off our seventeen-year-old daughter in New York City to begin a two-month intensive at the New York Film Academy. Can you imagine being seventeen and on your own in arguably the greatest city in the world? I am excited for her.
I am also excited for us. We were young parents. We had Jonah when I was twenty-five and Mark was twenty-six. I don't regret giving up the last half of my twenties to parenting. We were happily beyond the diaper stage when all of our friends were getting started. And now, we are enjoying a kidless respite at an age at which we can still have fun. Let the wild rumpus begin.
When we moved to Arden, we downsized, anticipating this point in our evolution, but the downsizing was a bit premature. At one point, while Mark was tiling the downstairs bathroom, we were down to one shower for four people. That phase lasted four months. Just as Jonah was moving out, Mark finished his project.
Jonah. The one who doesn't like change and didn't want to move out of our old house. We moved to Arden the same month he graduated so that he could finish high school in Pennsylvania. And he was going on to West Chester University in the fall. It seemed like a opportune time for all of us. But Jonah didn't take to Computer Science at West Chester or it didn't take to him. The jury is still out on that one. Regardless, he didn't go back for a second year. Which meant he was coming to live with us in an unfamiliar place with lots of trees. For some reason, Jonah professes a dislike for trees. We think he lived on the heaths of England in a former life. For a few months, he moped in his room which is not a proper bedroom, but a back space that becomes an extra TV/computer/beer storage room when he is gone. Then he got a part-time job as an outdoors activities coordinator at Arden's summer program. It was a temporary gig. He got to meet a lot of of new neighbors. Kids followed him around like the Pied Piper when we went to the pool or music events. Eventually though the gig ended, and he needed something more. His friend Zero called him with a job opportunity back "home" in Pennsylvania. The two of them planned to get an apartment together.
"Wait to see if the job is a good fit before you commit to an apartment," we said.
Jonah moved in temporarily with Mark's parents. Within months, the job fell through, and Zero moved down south. Mark's mom networked and quickly found Jonah a better job at a machine shop. There Jonah puts together elevator parts with a loquacious, older man whose life work it is to prove that all events in the Bible are factual. While his coworker babbles, Jonah invents imaginary worlds (the basis of a science fiction novel?) in his head. He recently moved a sofa and a desk into the upstairs suite of rooms he has taken over in his grandparents' house.
"He will never move out," his grandmother says, and I can't tell if she is happy or horrified.
I worry that Jonah is isolating himself from people his own age. In Arden there are so many more opportunities for social interaction. I want to bring him back here, but I also want him to find his own path. So for now, I have to be content with giving him unsolicited advice on the little bits of writing he shares with me. I need to keep the dialog open, so I tread carefully.
Maren is a different story. She has wanted to be a film actress all her life. She was working towards those goals, even graduating early so she could eventually get an agent and start auditioning for parts. That was the plan anyway. She is the polar opposite of her brother, and we worry that too much socializing is stunting her ability to follow through on her plans. She has a serious boyfriend. This relationship is at the heart of her stalled momentum. We encouraged her to go back to acting class, but didn't push. She was the one who came up with the idea to go to the New York Film Academy. It was a good plan, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it will force her to expand her world view beyond an embrace. That's the good news. The bad news is that she will come back to us in two months after having had the sweet taste of freedom and ownership of her own life. She will still be seventeen for another three months when she returns. Do we dispense with rules? How will we let go of all the freedoms we gained while our kids are gone?
And we have gained freedoms. We don't have to worry about being awakened when she comes in at a minute past her curfew which is two hours past our bedtime. I don't have to fear the constant interruptions when I am writing. When she is around, she is a flurry to the brain--always asking the most bothersome questions, the most frequent of which is "What are we having for dinner?" followed closely in frequency by "What can I eat for lunch?" Most of the times, our dinner menus are written on our chalkboard, so the first question is really laziness on her part.
Don't get me wrong. We love our kids. We want them to succeed. We want to help in that. But we also realize that becoming a full-fledged adult is uncomfortable work. They push boundaries. We push back--or give in depending on our level of fatigue. We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Might this be our chance at a new life, too? It isn't like we are trying to recapture the missing half of our twenties. We wouldn't go back there for all the magic beans in fairyland.  The wisdom of our years is a far greater prize. What can we do with our hard-earned savvy and new liberation? The possibilities seem endless. We can sleep with the bedroom door open. We can have the TV all to ourselves. Where to vacation or go on a moment's notice? And the suggestion that even casual acquaintances bring up to us that we can now have sex in any room of the house we want. (Seriously, this advantage has been offered up to us as the Holy Grail of Empty Nesting more times than you would imagine.)
This phase is just a snapshot of what is to come. Maren will return in May, and life with kids will begin again. She is talking about getting an apartment with the boyfriend sooner rather than later which makes us want to bang our foreheads on the kitchen table. Maybe Jonah has room in his suite. HA! Wouldn't Mark's parents love that? They became empty-nesters the first time at ages 42 and 45. I'm sure they didn't see this particular boomerang coming until it hit them in the faces.
The point is that life is not a straight line. It is a labyrinthine path that forces you to circle back and examine your choices from different perspectives. For the moment we are empty nesters with all that the label implies. You might want to call before you stop by.

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