Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

When my daughter was home at Thanksgiving, she told me that she didn’t fit in her bed anymore. I was surprised because I thought she had already stopped growing (taller) even though I knew at the same time that she had grown so much since she had gone to college. It was a moment of mental paradox.

What made me wobble even more, however, was the fact I needed to get her a new bed. You see, I haven’t bought either of my kids a bed since they were born.

Having to buy two of everything made me both frugal and a future thinker. Back then I told my husband we needed to spend just a bit more on the convertible cribs in order to get the most use out of the furniture. Cribs became toddler beds, which turned into full beds. Both kids slept in their full-sized beds until my son jumped too hard and broke his. After spending a few months sleeping on the mattress on the floor, he decided he liked that layout, so I never bought him a new frame.

But the Black Friday sales called to me, and I quickly decided to make my daughter’s home sleeping arrangements as comfortable as I could. I mean, after all, shouldn’t she love sleeping at home more than in her dorm?

The box arrived, and I was surprised at how small it was. How could a bed fit in there? Then, I opened it, outwardly groaning as I saw how many pieces there were. It was Sunday evening, and I had been away for the weekend, visiting with my parents and watching my daughter dance. It had been a long week at work (more on that to come in a future post!). Needless to say, by the time Sunday evening rolled around, all I wanted to do was take a bath and watch TV. But instead, I faced the challenge of creating a new bed for my grownup daughter.

When she got home from college yesterday, I asked her to help me move the pieces of her old bed to the attic. “Why are you keeping it?” she asked. She thought I should just donate it since she clearly wasn’t going to need it anymore. I made a joke about needing a crib if she ever had a baby and a more serious quip about the fact that the bed matched the dressers she was still using. But what I really meant, and didn’t say, was that I wasn’t ready, just quite yet, to let my own baby go. So we put the crib in the attic, where it will fill time until I’m ready.