It's this time of year that a lot of teens and young adults get ready to flee the nest, moving away from home to pursue study, work or travel. For those left behind, it can feel like a void. But, as Sarah Catherall discovered, it can also feel like sweet freedom.
A few days ago, my sister told me she had a couple more weeks of juggling the kids during school holidays. The school holidays?! I remember those. As an empty nester, I'd have to Google to have any idea when the school term begins.
I spent 23 years with a daughter or three in my home. For about eight years of that time, i was also a single mother/co-parent, and the intensity of mothering was amplified.
A year ago, my youngest left the nest, flying off to Otago University to study law. It felt like the years had raced by – I clutched class photos showing her with gaps in her front teeth, and it seemed like yesterday that I watched her winning her cross country race, flying across the school lawn past everyone else.
I still called her “bub’’ and I catastrophised her leaving, and for a few months leading up to her departure I felt a sinking dread. My thirties, forties and early fifties had been divided up by school terms, interrupted with school holidays, and the weeks revolved around my work and life, but also around my daughters’ needs and routinues: dinners and school lunches, dance drop-offs, netball games, school events, sleepovers, and later, balls, and formals, and teenage parties.
What was my life going to be without a daughter or three to think about? Who was I if I wasn’t a mother with a child living under my roof?
I settled her into her university hall and we whizzed around Briscoes to pick up click and collect sheets and towels and coathangers and met her friends who were as excited as she was about leaving home. My stomach churned as we kissed her goodbye. “Please call me all the time,’’ I whispered, and she nodded, pretending. I couldn’t look back as we drove away.
Then we did something radical which set the tone for our empty nest chapter. Rather than returning to Wellington, and to home, my partner and I hired a car and we drove to Central Otago for a few days. It was the school term and we didn’t have to be back in Wellington for school drop-offs and to cook yet another meal. We booked an Airbnb and worked remotely, and in our down time, we biked and walked and swam in the lake.
Best of all there were no crowds. There were no kids splashing in the lake, no traffic queues to get into Queenstown for a Ferg Burger. We quickly discovered the perks of empty nesting. Our food bill was slashed, and over the year, if we went anywhere, we travelled off-peak.
But it was the mental and emotional space I gained which took me by surprise, taking me back to when I was living in London in my twenties, when I only had myself to think about, when weekends and after-work hours were an empty slate I could fill in whichever way I pleased. I went out and reviewed theatre shows without worrying what was for dinner, and I released a book and went around the country on a book tour, without having to organise the kids while I was away.
Women typically carry more than their share of the emotional and mental load of parenting, and this “mother load’’ means our goals and needs are often parked while the kids need us. I hadn’t appreciated all the time I spent thinking or doing mothering stuff, even when my youngest was in her final year of high school, when she began to pull away and try to be independent, but was still living under the family roof.
It’s an adjustment when they come home from university. It reminds me of when I was in a long-distance relationship with their father and I’d look forward to his return but, a few hours into it, our annoying habits would start to grate on each other, until we settled back into being a couple again. It’s like that when they return from their hostels and flats over the university holidays and leave damp towels on the floor, a messy bench, empty toilet rolls on top of the loo, and all the drinking glasses are half full of water or flat Coke and scattered throughout the house. Oh and where has the spare house key gone?
They’ve had months flatting, following cleaning and cooking rosters, but these habits which are rigorously guarded by their flatties and friends, disappear as soon as they step through your front door.
Now I feel sorry for any of my friends whose young adult kids are living at home while studying or working because they can’t afford to move out. We parents need the space from them, the time to pause and embrace our own new chapters as empty nesters as much as they need to buggar off and find their way in the world.
When they return or we reunite in the holidays, our relationships are better. They’ve grown up and we’ve chilled from the time out. I learn from my kids as young adults and love watching them grow up; they constantly surprise me.
Our middle daughter has returned to Wellington for her first job and she’s chosen to live at home for a few months. Her sparkle throws energy into the house, but I’ve already set some ground rules. “There’s no food,’’ she will moan, or “are you going away for the weekend again?’’
"I’m an empty nester now," I reply. There’s no going back. I remember the words of a friend who told me to cherish the empty nest, because you blink and the grandchildren arrive.
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