In earlier blogs I mentioned that my daughter was getting married. She was married about two months ago. What a happy time but also one of the most stressful times. It’s amazing how a wedding can bring out the worst and the best of people. This was my second daughter to get married so I figured I was ready for this along with all the emotions that come with it.
With my first daughter it felt so easy. She was an easy bride and everything seemed to fall into place. There were no problems with the planning of her wedding; everything just seemed to go so smooth. The only issues was her new brother-in-law making out at the head table with his girlfriend and then getting extremely drunk and making an embarrassing toast. We ended up having to have him escorted out, but what’s a wedding without the one relative that we all pretend that we don’t know and shake our heads as though to say “It’s so not like him to act this way”.
With my second daughter things weren’t as easy but now looking back it wasn’t that bad. My daughter was a beautiful bride, just as beautiful as my first daughter. There were many similarities to both weddings as far as my emotions went; but when she put on her dress my emotions took over. I started feeling as though I was losing my baby and as the night wore on the feeling got worse. By the time the happy couple was ready to leave I felt as though my whole world was crashing down around me and this mean man was ripping my baby from my arms. I went to give her a hug good bye and I could not let go. My oldest daughter finally stepped in and pulled me away. I ran to my husband and started crying, where I’m sure he was thinking “what is wrong with her”, I just couldn’t help my feelings. The next day I was much better and ok with the fact that she was now a married woman and was a Mrs. So and So.
Since her wedding I now feel as though we are true empty nester. Other than her Poly Pockets, old prom dresses, and some things left over from her cosmetology school days all of her belongings have moved with her. What used to be her bedroom is a guestroom with no hint of it ever belonging to my baby girl. I have decided that I need to embrace this time of my life and really start figuring out who I am. My husband and I are celebrating 30 glorious years of marriage and the great part is that we really enjoy each other more now than we did when we were first married. We are happy to just sit together without feeling as though we have to talk. We love being able to stay out late and not have to worry about a babysitter, getting a child to an activity, or whether or not they have had dinner; they are adults they can figure out whether they need to eat or not all on their own.
Since embracing this change in our lives my husband has his naked room (it’s his den and for the most part he isn’t naked just in his underwear), dinner is chips and salsa, cranking on music from the 70’s and 80’s is acceptable, and we can stay out as late as we want with no worries. Oh how I love being empty nesters; we worked hard to get to this point and we are enjoying every minute of it.
It is fun discovering (rediscovering?) who you are when your life can no longer be summairzed in the word 'parent'.
ReplyDeleteWhen we started having time to ourselves, it took us a year or two to find things we enjoyed doing with our free time - and almost as long to reuse the newly vacated room. :-)
I watched my parents raise a couple of their grandkids by housing them and one of my siblings. While it is a very tempting thing to do, it does no one any favors. It didn't teach those being helped self-reliance, and it robbed my parents of those years where they could rediscover being just a couple again. They had none of that time together as my mom ended up dieing before they truly became empty nesters. Lesson learned.