Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

I spent most of my childhood living in a house under some version of construction. My parents purchased a 150-year-old farmhouse when I was a toddler, and they spent the next couple of decades bringing it back to life. They did it with their own minds and hands in segments as time and money permitted over the years. What started with creating livable quarters (bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, family room) turned to modern improvements to the property itself. They closed in the old summer kitchen and porch to extend the useful space; they built a swingset and fort for their growing kids; they added a garage.

In my pre-teen years, they made the decision to put in a pool. I’m not 100% sure why they chose that particular improvement, but I do know the impact it had on me. It became a place where my middle and high school friends and I gathered, where my college boyfriend and I played during visits on summer break, where extended family came together for reunions, and eventually, where my children splashed happily and learned to dive.

I knew that the pool helped to create community, and over the years, my husband and I tossed around the idea of taking on pool construction for our own house. Having observed how little we enjoyed the physical and mental labor of house renovations and yardwork over the years, my dad sagely advised us: “Don’t get a pool. You don’t want to take care of it.”

His logic stuck. Our disinterest in (or perhaps our inability to) putting in enormous effort beyond our jobs and our kids is the reason we never got a dog, though we both had them growing up. It’s why pets will not fill our time as empty-nesters. It’s why we don’t have a flower garden or vegetable garden or any other high-maintenance project that requires ongoing care. All of it takes time and effort that we have not had to give over the years of TwinLife.

So we decided not to do a pool when the kids were young. We were content to play on the backyard swingset and take small hikes through the woods. But then six years ago, a microburst flattened an entire section of our woods, taking out nearly all of the trees in the yard too. The backyard behind our deck had been completely destroyed, though we were lucky no damage was done to the house.

As I stood at what had been the border of the yard and the woods, looking through the ruins to the horizon beyond (not something that had ever been visible before), I wondered, “What can we do with this?” My mind wandered beyond the cleanup to the possibility of an outdoor fireplace or pergola. I mentally scrolled quickly past “a pool,” knowing my husband agreed with my dad that we didn’t want to take care of it.

Eventually, my husband wandered down to look at the aftermath with me, and we turned together from the fallen woods to the backyard. I verbalized my question.
“What can we do with this?”

Without a beat he responded, “Let’s put in a pool.”

And just like that, we made the decision to do the thing we had been warned not to do. My kids were about the same age I was when my own parents had opened their pool. I knew they would love it. (They did. Of course they did.) I knew they would gather with friends many times over the years. (They did.) I knew it would be a place where our family could gather and play. (It has been.) And I knew if we added a hot tub, I’d spend more time in the water.

Last week, I opened the season in the hot tub, listening to an audiobook and watching the sun set. My husband eventually joined me, and before we knew it, my daughter was on FaceTime, hanging out with us. The thing we had once said we wouldn’t do now sits at the core of time filled together.