In January, Jason and I will have an empty nest when our youngest child, William, heads off to university in Victoria. We are not the first family to go through this phenomenon, and we won’t be the last, but it feels like a big change and I’m trying to make space to process it.
I’ve been struggling this fall with how to parent grown-up children. It requires a loosening of the strings that have held us tightly together as a family unit. But I don’t know how to navigate this stage.
Ava came home earlier this month for a few days during fall break. I did some Christmas baking and bought some festive holiday candy and treats like I always have. I planned an outing to a favourite Belgian waffle cafe to celebrate all of us being together. But somehow it felt different this time around.
The KitKat house I gave the kids sat unopened on the table. Every other year, Ava and William unwrapped this gift and then built it together, while Christmas music played. But this Christmas season, I put the kit away in the closet and I realised that both kids have other things going on now. This childhood tradition was just that: from their childhood, and now we were in a new stage.
I found this disorienting and lonely. I felt silly for trying to keep everything as it was, when very shortly both kids will be moved out of the house and be living in dorms with other students. But there are no rules for these big life transitions. We have to figure out how to behave as the changes are unfolding. And I’ve never been particularly skilled at letting go.
I’m experimenting with not texting Ava as much while she’s at school. She’s now in her third year of her theatre degree, and she’s busy, and somehow this year feels different in our relationship compared to last year. It’s strange to nurture my kids from a distance. To love them and miss them, but actively work at letting them know that it’s healthy for them to grow away from me.
Jason seems way better at this than I am. Maybe this is because his role as a dad was always a little more emotionally distanced than mine was as the mom. So now I’m trying to learn from him. I know it’s time to step back, and to focus more on my own career and what I might need now that the day-to-day hands-on parenting stage is over.
Some days this feels like freedom, and other days it feels like a loss. Like something really good and precious is over and can never be retrieved.
To fill the void, we decided to fill our empty nest with another kitten. Meet Pippin, who joined us earlier this month, at just 8 weeks of age. He’s cuddly and adorable, and he fills me with joy.
