Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

I was moving Christmas trees to be loaded onto a delivery truck when my phone rang. “We decided to head to my parents,” my husband said. My heart did a little flip-flop because I knew that I would not be able to say a proper goodbye to my son, who was heading back to college to take a final exam.

He and his sister had come home after classes were finished since neither had exams scheduled until the end of finals period. Between his social schedule and my schedule, we had barely seen each other since I had picked him up at the train station and spent an hour in the car debriefing the end of the semester.

His train to go back to school was scheduled to leave at 7:55 Sunday morning, and Saturday we realized that a snowstorm was likely going to hit the area. My husband’s parents live much closer to the train so I suggested that they head there Saturday night. Because I was volunteering for the local Festival of Trees, a large fundraiser for the Senior Resource Center in our town, getting to the train station was on my husband.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I responded, glad I had hugged my boy as I left the house earlier.

It was, in fact, a good idea. Sunday morning I woke early to over 6 inches of snow. Though my son would be able to get to the train station, I was left facing the challenge of getting to my volunteer responsibilities without our SUV, which was with my husband and son.

I have been volunteering for the Festival of Trees for 15 years. I started decorating trees with my mom after attending the event when my children were little. As a decorator, I focused entirely on the trees we were making, paying little attention to the effort being put in behind the scenes to make the fundraiser happen each year. My job was to prepare my trees, and if any did not sell, to show up on breakdown day to undecorate the ones we created. With young twins at home, I didn’t have much more time that I could devote to the process. I would sneak in, pack up my decorations, and sneak out as quickly as possible.

But as my kids became more independent, I started to notice all of the work that other people were doing on breakdown day. As the seniors in charge of the event struggled to carry tables, platforms, and boxes to the moving truck, which would take everything from the event location to the storage location, I started to help. In talking to one of the committee members, I learned that they really did not have a lot of people working to plan the event and that the back-breaking labor of setup and breakdown was – quite literally – breaking them.

So I joined the committee. My primary role was to recruit and organize teen volunteers to help with the manual labor, but I quickly realized that I could also help the committee to digitize and centralize its operations. My kids and mom joined me in volunteering more of our time to the event, and over the last few years, we have been able to streamline and improve the process of setup and breakdown.

With the kids going to college this year, I not only lost my two best helpers, but I also lost some of the time I could give to the committee and the process, as parenting college students has proven to be a time filler I was not necessarily expecting! However, this year I still organized teens to help, and I was scheduled to run the breakdown day – now blanketed by snow.

As I stared at the white blanket outside my window, I made the decision to delay the start of breakdown day, giving teen families and myself time to dig out. And then I sighed heavily because dealing with our long, hilly driveway in the snow has always been my husband’s job. In the 18 winters we have lived in our house, I’ve only started the snowblower twice.

Luckily, my hubby gave great instructions over the phone, and the machine started on the first pull! Unfortunately, the snow was so wet and heavy that the snowblower packed itself up and started to overheat before I finished.

Figuring I go to the gym six days a week for this exact purpose (this is not why I go to the gym), I abandoned the snowblower with its mechanical stench and stomped through the snow to the shed to find the shovels. About an hour later, I had dug out the car and cleared a path to the street – which still hadn’t been plowed. Yes, I beat DPW to the finish line!

About an hour after that, my husband arrived home with the SUV at the same time the plow came through our street. Off to the Festival of Trees breakdown I went. 15,000 steps later (not counting my work on the driveway), the hall was clear, and I was bone tired. My body ached from 8 hours of physical labor, and my muscles screamed at me. I capped off the night with an epsom salt bath and glass of wine, the satisfaction of filling time by testing my physical limits and supporting a great cause sending me to bed before 8PM.