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LEBANON WEATHER

Angel Kane: Empty nest silence increases in Year 2




Kane

Kane

The house is quiet once again.

Our adult children who had descended upon us in early May have all gone back to whence they came.

Our son is back in college, our middle daughter officially started an adult job in a new city where she can Uber her heart out and our oldest is continuing to live her best life with a job, a house and a solid plan for her future.

Empty nesting – Year 2 — is upon us and this time the sadness lasted just long enough for us to unload our son’s suitcase from the back of the truck, throw a comforter on his new bed, hug him goodbye, remind him bad choices have consequences and find the nearest Starbucks.

Last time we made the drive back from dropping him off, we were both pretty melancholy. After two decades of raising kids there were none now under our roof and we weren’t quite sure what to do next. This time, however, we booked not one but two trips by the time we got back to our driveway.

Empty nesting, you see, comes with a few realizations. The most profound of which is … that while the kids may attempt to move out … the truth is they basically never really leave. Not if you keep the fridge packed with their favorite goodies, their beds made with clean, crisp sheets and you send them photos here and there of what’s for dinner. Then give it a few weeks and someone is going to come home.

And when they do, you can love on them, comfort them and then pack them up some groceries and send them back home … to their home that is. That’s because between those visits, you’ve got things to do, places to go and more living to do. That’s the other realization. When they all leave, you don’t die. It maybe feels like it for a minute but a few weeks of a clean house and zero responsibilities and you are officially risen.

Having been there, done that, I can definitely tell all the parents out there who are experiencing it for the first time that empty nesting – Year 2 – is profoundly different than Year 1. In Year 1, I literally was googling how to become a foster parent. In Year 2, I may give away my dog just so I can have even more me time.

And I hear it gets better from there!

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