Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

As I grabbed a basket of laundry, a few of my son’s clothes tossed on top, the tears threatened. They had been lingering just below the surface for over 48 hours.

It was Tuesday morning, the last day of fall break for both my kids. The previous ten days had been filled with more emotion than I wanted. While I was riding the high of a musical reunion for the 30th anniversary of the founding of my college a cappella group, my college freshman, who had just turned 18 in August, called me.

“I don’t know how to say this,” were the words I heard over the phone line. I proceeded to listen to the most heartbreaking message, one that made me ache for my child and for the family of another child.

Parenting from afar is hard, but I learned it’s even harder when your kids don’t know how to talk on the phone. As a teacher, I know about wait time. I know you need to let people process their thinking before stepping in. As a human born in the 1970s, I know how to have a conversation on the phone – without visual cues for how long to allow for wait time before it becomes awkward and nothing more comes of the conversation. My kids, born into a world of FaceTime, do not have these phone talking skills. Helping my child navigate the feelings that traversed through the stages of grief last weekend made it clear to me that parenting via phone was going to be very hard. I needed to be in the geographical same space to offer support – and also to read the aura. Was my kiddo ok? Though we had talked several times a day since that first phone call, the week had been overtaken by midterms, and I wasn’t sure where my child stood emotionally.

Luckily, the week turned into fall break, and after a 4+ hour train delay, all four of us were in the same house together. Were my kiddos okay? This question became the lens through which I viewed the weekend. Because my husband had a business trip, it ended up just being my twins and me for 48 hours of it. Both of them had many things to do, so I just sat back, watching them, listening when they talked, and jumping in to play a game of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza and watch a movie assigned to my son for one of his classes. It was great. We were all happy, seemingly all ok.

Except I felt weird the entire time, and it wasn’t something I could attribute to parental worry and trying to figure out if my kids were okay in their new worlds and lives.

Tuesday morning, their last day with me, I woke up early to go to the gym. I came back to a quiet house, which isn’t unusual nowadays. But that day I knew my kids were asleep upstairs – and that they wouldn’t be the next morning. The next morning, the quiet wouldn’t end. I went about my morning business, including making coffee. Shortly thereafter, my son came downstairs, telling me he was meeting a friend at the diner for breakfast. It made me happy, despite the fact that I knew I only had about two hours left before he went back to school. Friends are family, and it’s important to cultivate those relationships.

With the house quiet again, I refilled my coffee mug, and as the liquid poured into it, my tears overflowed. Of all the moments in the last two months, it was a strange time for the emotion to escape. There was nothing about putting milk in my coffee that should have released the valve. After they both went to college, many people asked how I was doing. At the time, I was honest and said I was fine – almost like the weight of mom-parenting had been lifted. My husband, on the other hand, took their departure hard. I understood – and perhaps I compensated for it. I let him grieve while I was focused on being excited for their next adventure.

At the same time, I knew that it would likely hit me when they went back to school after fall break. I literally told everyone who asked me how I was that they should ask me after fall break. I thought that it would be because the house was empty without the veil of “summer camp.” But I didn’t realize how strange I would feel for the entire time they were home too. I didn’t realize the dam would break even before they left to go back to school.

Having them home has been surreal. It’s been both normal and different. I had just enough time to adjust to life without dance and baseball and all the things. And not enough time to adjust to them. Them. Their adult selves. They were markedly different, though not in a way I can clearly articulate. They were functioning adults, doing their school work, seeing their friends, and chipping in around the house. They were good roommates and great conversation partners. They seemed appreciative to be home; I was thankful they both were. They were changed, just a bit, but enough to notice, and it threw me off kilter.

I was keenly aware every moment that it was different – and also that being in the space with them was temporary. I couldn’t unstick myself from that perspective. Subconsciously I think I knew that I wouldn’t have enough time to fully understand what had shifted. At random times I found myself swallowing hard, wishing away nerves in my belly, and fighting to keep the tears under lock.

Until I couldn’t anymore. A few tears escaped into my coffee mug just hours before they left, and a few sobs after the three of us took a picture before they walked out the door. Then, as I closed the garage behind them, I lost it. As I wandered the house throughout the rest of the day, I noticed the lego succulents that my daughter and husband had built before he left for his business trip; the computer adapter my son had used to watch the movie with me; the cups –so many cups!– all over the house; the towels they had casually thrown in the laundry before leaving. I felt the grief of being alone in a house where my kids had left imprints, tiny marks of their presence that now signified their absence. And I know that FillingTime has shifted for me.