empty nest Archives - Page 167 of 167 - Adulting: Second- Half

Good Grief

Obviously when a child leaves the nest it’s inevitable that you will go through the process of some grieving. Grief. It’s a word, a process, an experience that we all want to avoid. In fact, I’m sure a lot of my readers right now are going, “Okay, time to X out of this page.” My husband likes to say that no one gets to middle age without going through at least one “major biggie.” And most of us have gone through more than one “biggie” by this time in our lives. Grief is an obvious outcome when we lose someone we love deeply or a long term relationship ends. There are a lot of support systems out there to help us with that expected type of grief journey. In fact, even when our aged, grumpy old man of a dog died last year at the ripe old age of at least 15 (he was a rescue, so his age was sort of up in the air), my vet handed us a 20 page booklet on how to deal with the grief of the loss of a pet.

They say that there are five stages of grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. The annoying thing about these stages is that they are not linear; you get to be-bop back and forth between them. Just when you think you are past one of these stages, something sets you back and you feel like you are at the beginning of it all over again. Grief is a lonely emotion. I’m sure that my husband and I are both grieving the fact that our nucleus family will never be the same structure that is has been for the past 22 years, but we are grieving it in different ways and be-bopping through the stages at different paces and tempos. Loving friends and family can empathize and support us through our grief, but their loving energies and prayers are just good sustenance in our backpacks as we travel this road by ourselves, individually.

I used to feel guilty about grieving. A lot of the times, the things that you grieve are also tied into exciting, happy new beginnings. I’m truly thrilled for son’s new opportunities and for the space that has been created in my life because he has moved on with his life. Every time that we moved to a new town, we grieved for our friends and neighbors, our jobs and our homes and the memories that would now be part of our past, but at the same time we were very excited for the newness of a new place, and for the experiences and people that would come with that new place. Grief can be major or minor. Heck, I grieved when my favorite perfume was discontinued and I could no longer even find it even on ebay!

One year one of my children’s yearbooks had a quote that said something to the affect that we grieve our moments in time because there is a deep understanding in us that the person we are right now in this time and place will never be the same person again. Even if we try to duplicate the experience, it can’t be the same because we aren’t the same person anymore. We are constantly changing due to our experiences and growth. So in this sense, we even grieve a former version of our own selves.

Grief is a multi-layered experience. When we are grieving someone or something, we often find old remnants of previous grieving that we thought we had already accepted. What a lovely surprise! Ha! I think the older I get, I have learned to stop labeling things as much as I used to do. Grief just is. We want to think of it is “bad” or “negative”, but it really isn’t either of those things. It’s just one of those aspects of us that proves to ourselves that we are deeply alive. I would definitely rather feel than to be numb. Why would I want to cut off the experience of feeling all of those times of pride, excitement, happiness, joy, peace, contentment, wonder, and mostly deep, deep love to avoid going through the pain of grief?? My son’s venturing out into the world towards his own adult adventures has sparked every emotion in me that I ever knew that I had, and if I accept this process and I allow this process instead of resisting it, I will come out the other end of it stronger and wiser than I have ever been before.

The Grind

I’m going to the dentist today. Obviously, I’m not excited about that fact. I didn’t put an exclamation point on that sentence. Yay! I’m going to the dentist today! I have to get a crown because my back molar chipped. My dentist insists that this is because I refuse to buy an expensive, bulky mouth guard to sleep with every night to protect my pearlies as I grind away at my teeth at night. I insist that those high priced hunks of rubber are only going to add to my dust collector collection, as I won’t be able to sleep with wax lips in my mouth.

For years, my dentist and I have had a love/hate relationship. He thinks I’m stubborn and foolish but he loves me because I’m the one who has made sure that all six members of the family have seen him regularly for seven years. I say, “Here I am, your favorite, know-it-all patient!” and he says, “Great to see you, my retirement savings have just gone up.” He has taken the impacted wisdom teeth out of the jaws of our two older boys, and created the beautiful smiles, with years of pricey orthodontics, for our two younger children. He has filled fillings, created crowns and lectured all of us to do a better job with flossing. (As much as I have tried to “walk the talk” and be a good example to our children, this is an area where I may have fallen a wee bit short.) My dentist knows my family and due to the fact that dentists mostly can only “talk at” you, I feel like I know his family and their adventures, too.

Which brings me to the sad part because today I am going to see a dentist I have never seen before. Our dentist has retired from this practice. While I understand that change is the only constant in life, it’s hard when the foundation people of your community start leaving and moving on. We have had to move our family for better job opportunities a couple of times over the years and I always enjoyed the excitement and novelty of exploring a new town. However, to make sure that the family feels secure and safe, there are some staple professional people you pick out when you first move and you make them “your own.” I remember being truly surprised when my eldest son got his “college shots” at the pediatrician and we were told that he would need to find an “adult doctor” now. What?!? Why?!? There is nothing disturbing about seeing a 6’2″ man with a beard waiting in the waiting room, watching Dora the Explorer with the other kids. Where are his Teddy Grahams for being a good boy?!? There have been a couple of occasions where three or maybe even four of our kids have even had the same teacher. My daughter recently told me that one of these teachers said that she was his favorite out of all of our family’s kids. I am pretty sure that he said that to all of our kids, but I kept that to myself.

Why is it that we accept that changes in our own lives are inevitable but feel angry and confused and bewildered when others go on with their changes in their lives? Why does it feel insulting when one of our long time neighbors move? Why do we understand that our kids are growing up but feel utterly bewildered when we get Christmas cards portraying previous members of our kids’ play groups in graduation robes and wedding gowns?? It’s like we want to explore and grow and learn, but we need everything else around us to remain the same, to be our “rocks of stability.” I think it’s like when my kids first started to crawl and to then walk and then to run. They always crawled, walked and ran back to me to make sure that I was still there, holding their security blankets to melt back into when they got tired.

I’m sure that the new dentist will be a nice, competent person and I sure that I will continue to be lectured on mouth guards and gum disease. I’m sure that we will all be okay and adjust accordingly. We’ll keep smiling. Life goes on, even though one of our “rocks of stability” has become a rolling stone.

Awkward Stage

A couple of weeks ago, I took my eldest son and my daughter who is my youngest child to lunch (I call them my Alpha and my Omega). We went to a restaurant I had never been to before that is known for its nightly shows and bands. When I asked our waiter what show he would recommend, he looked at me and without a stutter he said, “Oh, definitely Throwback Thursday. My mom loves that show.” Ouch.

Now, he was right. I am definitely old enough to be his mom. And I love 80s/90s music, because that’s the music I was brought up on, but ugh, I didn’t want him to notice that fact. I didn’t want him to look at me and think “Throwback.”

I think that I’m at that awkward stage of my Second Half of Adulting. It’s similar to the one I went through in my First Half of Adulting, when I was just a preteen. That first awkward stage involved being stuck between being a kid and being a young adult. The big dilemma at that stage was, “Do I still want to play with my toys or do I want to kiss boys?” The second awkward stage is coming to the acceptance that the stuff that I like is starting to be considered a little “outdated”, but not old enough to be considered “retro and cool.” The second awkward stage is the awakening to the fact that I’m not necessarily part of the mover/shaker crowd anymore. The marketers and the trend watchers are more interested in what my kids are buying and doing than in me anymore. And there’s a conflict because I’m not sure I want to move out of the First Half of Adulting. I still have two kids at home and unfortunately, retirement seems quite far away, but I’m starting to not fit in with the First Halfers anymore either.

It’s subtle changes you notice when you are moving out of your First Half of Adulting. It’s like when you see the Barbie you played with as a kid, now in the window of an antiques store, or you start realizing that you don’t really know who 85% of the people on the cover of the gossip magazines are anymore. The frequency of being called “Ma’am” goes up a notch. Last year I had a part-time job where I shared a cubicle area with a couple of millennial women. We were talking about weekend plans and I said that my husband and I were going to Hall and Oates. My coworker said, “Oh cool, is that an island?”

The Second Half of Adulting is still new to me. So, it’s hard to “own it” with confidence. I know that my husband and I could not pull off Hipster with any kind of grace. Tattoos, nose piercings, pink streaked hair, woolly beards and beanies aren’t part of our middle aged comfort zone. But at the same token, I’m not ready to shop for retirement communities yet, either. It’s funny how life cycles around. I never dreamed I’d have to go through another “awkward stage” but I guess these are the stages in life that you must go through to figure out what you really want next. You get so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, that you finally accept your new role, your new place in society with confidence. You’re the “record player” now because you’re cool again. And you never stopped being a record player, it’s just that you’ve stopped apologizing for being a record player and you’ve stopped trying to turn into Spotify. With your new self confidence and self worth, people remember that you’ve always been pretty amazing and that that you still have an important role to play, it’s just shifted a little. And maybe that’s not so bad.

Costco and Aging

I’m about to write something kind of “cringy.” My kids say that I say “cringy” things all of the time, so I guess I’ll just stay on my roll. Today my husband and I are going to Costco and I’m giddy about it. Yes, giddy. I’m pretty sure that my husband’s excited about it, too. It’s on the list of Date Night Options and it makes the cut a lot of the time. I’m not sure why I love Costco. I’ve had a membership for a long, long time and I didn’t always feel this way about it. When I was younger, I think I considered Costco to be more of a “necessary evil.” I hate crowds and our Costco is always crowded, starting with the crazy parking lot. The samples really don’t thrill me. I don’t really like Greek yogurt and quinoa is only good to me if it is smothered in some kind of fattening sauce. The sample “nazis” stress me out anyway. I’m still a little scarred from the time when I accidentally pulled a sample from the wrong side of the little plastic roof thing. That Sample Lady angrily immediately tossed out the entire tray of samples into the garbage can right in front of the hoards of people waiting with drool coming out of their mouths. I think I got the evil eye all at once from at least 60 people that day.

So, I’m trying to figure out why my husband and I like Costco as much as we do. It might be because Costco has a little something for everyone, or should I say a lot of something for everyone. I mean who doesn’t like good books, good gadgets, good prices and mounds of food? I really don’t think that is it, though. Now please don’t quote me on this because I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but I’m almost positive that loving Costco is part of the biological aging process. I think it goes like this: Wrinkles. Readers. Grey Hairs. Achy joints. Enthusiasm for Costco.

When we go to Costco it’s like a Middle Age Reunion Club. Every time we go there we always see someone from the past. We see couples from our former Travel Soccer Club Posse. We see current work colleagues and parents we met at College Orientation in the Book Store. And we all are smiling. And we all have full carts. And we are all going to get one of those delicious, cheap hot dogs wrapped in those steamy, pillowy buns because we earnestly believe that the jumbo size One A Day vitamin bottle that we just purchased will cancel out the guilty pleasure of the hot dogs. Whatever makes me happy about Costco, whether it be a biological switch or not, one thing is for certain. Costco is on the keeper list for my Second Half of Adulting.

That Woman

I have become That Woman. That Woman who drove Young Mama me insane. Young Mama me met That Woman several times throughout the child rearing years and it was never pretty. Typically, it went something like this. Young Mama me would be in the grocery store. I would be wearing the stained sweaty clothes from the day before or perhaps clean clothes that came off of the top of giant Mt. Laundry. We all knew that these clothes never really had a chance to make it into closets and drawers before being soiled again anyway. Young Mama me would be donning a pony tail that was starting to turn into an unintentional dreadlock. Young Mama me would be trying to keep the four kids organized in the grocery store by screaming at the top of her lungs, “Get in a line!!! Like ducks in a row!!” (All four kids still do a great impression of Young Mama me attempting to do this feat.) Back in those days the kids, of course, were very similar to marbles on the shiny, hard floor of the grocery store, bouncing, rolling, bumping into displays, spreading out in every which direction. Nothing at all like ducks in a row.

So, then Young Mama me would finally navigate the grocery cart overflowing with diapers, paper towels, family sized Cheerio boxes and a bunch of other things that the kids managed to sneak into the cart, to the checkout lane. Young Mama me usually eventually managed to get to the checkout lane with all four of her marbles in tow. Then, it never failed. That Woman was right behind Young Mama me, smiling serenely and winsomely at the crazy marbles, like they were Harry Winston diamonds that had just fallen from Heaven above. Now That Woman looked very different from Young Mama me. She was middle aged, wearing clean pressed clothes and donning a nice leather purse instead of a stained, smelly 3 ton diaper bag. Her hair and make-up were neatly done and her cart was near empty. She may have a container of sushi, a slab of cheese with a name Young Mama me could not pronounce, or perhaps a bottle of French wine, a baguette and a sleeve of fresh flowers. And she was at the store, peacefully, all by herself. And just in that moment when Young Mama me was desperately looking into the ether space for the fast forward button that would get me to That Woman’s stage in life, That Woman would look at Young Mama me, all doe-eyed, and say something like, “Oh honey, just enjoy these times, these kids. It all just goes so fast. Before you know it, they’ll be grown and gone.” In that moment, Young Mama me would desperately want to hit That Woman. While holding a death grip on my cart handle, I would be thinking, “WTF?!? What on Earth could possibly make you think that I need a Guilt Trip on top of all of this fun, you evil witch?!?”

Now that I am That Woman, I have a much better understanding of what she was trying to convey. It was not a guilt trip at all. That Woman is just not very good at communicating because she has a lump in her throat. That Woman can’t go back to herself as a Young Mama and say, “Honey, cut yourself a break. You are doing the best you can and what you think is so important, really isn’t. Those babies are going to be fine and as much as that little boy of yours, having a tantrum is driving you crazy, you are going to miss stroking his sweaty little red curls. Because one day, very, very soon, those curls will be on top of a 6’2″ man and you won’t be able to reach them. And he won’t be around anyway because he’ll be several hundred miles away in his new job, probably in a meeting room or eating lunch with colleagues. Yes, that little sweaty marble will have colleagues.” So, all that she is trying to do is to pay it forward because she can’t go back.

I really think if Young Mama and That Woman could see each other’s lives through each other’s eyes, they would really appreciate each other. It would be such a good reminder to not live too much in the past, but also not to try to rush into the future too quickly. Both ladies would realize that they have it pretty good in their current stage of life and then they would feel grateful for that and for each other. Then, as they were leaving the grocery store, they both would feel lighter, connected and excited to see what the rest of the day would bring.

What Next??

So yesterday I allowed myself a pathetic pity party. I thought it felt good at the time, but it got old fast. I think part of the mopefest was because I’m avoiding the hardest part of the Second Half of my Adulting. For me (and I suspect for a majority of women in my position), this is the trying to figure out the big ol’ What I Want to Do Next.

I recently saw a picture of a rally in which a woman held a poster that read, “Teach our Daughters to be Somebodies, Not Somebody’s”. I don’t think any of us made our minds up from the get go, to lose our “somebody” quality. I take pride in being J’s wife, and my kids’ mom. But over time, those identities did seem to swallow up most of the whole. Those identities did seem to make the first half of my adulting simple. Simple, mind you, not easy. When your family is young, your purpose is very clear. Keep the kids alive, keep them fed, keep them focused. We are a “traditional” family, so my husband is the primary breadwinner and I am the primary “cat herder.” Now as the cats are starting to leave the herd, there are a lot more options for me. This is exciting, but also bewildering.

I was a marketing major in college, a textbook sales person before my kids were born and I had a few part-time jobs over the years that were also mostly sales oriented. So, I suppose a sales job is a possibility. I had a small accessories business on ebay several years back. Perhaps I could start my own business again. My volunteer positions over the years have all centered around my kids’ schools and sports. Maybe I could branch out in the volunteer realm. I honestly feel no strong inclination or passion about any of these ideas just yet.

I’m very envious of people who feel a strong lifelong passion for their occupation and/or their hobbies. I’ve always felt like more of a dabbler. I tend to lose interest quickly. I read recently that to find a passion, you should follow your interests. Learn more about them and see where this leads you. There are so many gurus these days that advise to follow your heart or to follow your bliss. But if you have spent a lot of your life filling your heart with your family and following your family members’ bliss, it’s puzzling at first to find your own pathway back to your own bliss. So, I will take baby steps in getting to know me again. What are my interests? What are my favorite things to do just for me? What books/music/activities/foods really speak to me and how can incorporate these things into my second half?

Just like when my kids were born, I long for a detailed instruction book to guide me on exactly what to do, step by step, with guaranteed results. You’d think by my Second Half, I would have figured out that those instruction manuals really don’t exist, at least not in a traditional sense. I guess that I am going to have to trust that my internal life manager who has gotten me this far, will lead the way, if I just remove the impatience and fear that is clouding the path.

Adulting – Second Half

Today is the first day of my second half of “adulting.” Some people would say, “Whoa Nelly! Don’t jump the gun!” You see, my eldest child, my 22 year old son started his new adult life today, but I still have three kids in the cooker. That said, I’ve always been one to look ahead and I think I saw the writing on the wall when my eldest got his driver’s license. The fact that this new phase of my life was right around the corner became even more evident when he went off to college, which involved study abroad and internships in which he lived far, far away and came through the experiences alive and well and an even better, more interesting young man than he was before the adventures. So obviously, I see where this is going with the rest of my brood, soon to be following suit.

I had my eldest son when I was 25. I have spent most of my adult years being a mom. “Mom” has been my primary title, identity and structure of my life until yesterday when I “let” one little birdie fly the nest. At that moment, I felt that structure crack a teeny little bit. Seeing my son off to his new adult life was surreal and sort of anti-climatic. You drop your child off at his new apartment, you wish him luck on his first day of his exciting new job, you make sure he has groceries and you sit on your hands and wallet, knowing that he can well afford his own groceries now and your major work with him is done. Your part of the masterpiece has mostly concluded and your role has changed from nurturer, teacher, mentor, protector, provider to mostly now, just an excited observer. The scale has slowly shifted from predominantly shared adventures to now sharing with each other our mostly individual adventures.

As any parent having gone through this transition knows, the mixed bag of emotions being felt is tumultuous and almost undefinable. I have heard that we can fit all of our emotions into four simple categories: mad, glad, sad and scared. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is possible to feel all of those emotional categories all at once and deeply!

I have started this blog for me, but if it is helpful to others that would be grand. I have always felt that when people truly share what is really on their hearts, the world is a little less lonely. I don’t know where my second half of adulting leads me but I am certainly in the contemplation stage. And this new stage of my adventure is probably very similar to my son’s new experience – exciting, scary, exhilarating, freeing, introspective and necessary for us both to further develop into what we are meant to be in this mystery called Life.