Empty Nest

 My daughter is winding down her first year at college, and it feels like a huge milestone in my life, not just in hers.

The past year has been full of surprises.

First, let's be clear: it's nothing like I imagined... except when it is.

I thought she'd be social and spend too much time with new friends instead of studying. I thought I'd be worried all the time. I thought the house would feel empty and strange. I thought it would be the end of something. I thought she wouldn't commit to her studies and she might come home to find a different path. I thought she'd never come home on weekends.

I was wrong.

She's found her academic groove and she remains connected to her beloved childhood and high school friends (including her high school boyfriend), but she hasn't found community at school. I did worry a lot - a LOT - at first, but now I feel relatively peaceful. The house started by feeling empty, but now it just feels like home. She has found academic success and motivation, and she's committed to earning her degree. And she comes home frequently.

So: I was wrong about that.

But some of it is just as I hoped.

Moving her into the dorm was a magical experience that I found healing. As a non-traditional student without a lot of family support, I never got to live on campus (I barely spent any time on campus except classes, because mostly I worked). Going shopping for Tessa's supplies - the perfect chambray blue duvet cover; towels that were soft and fluffy; a mattress topper because it was on the list of "must haves"; throw pillows that I'm pretty sure never get used but made her eyes light up when we bought them - was so much fun. When I had my first apartment nothing was new, or pretty, or special. My first Christmas after leaving my parents' house I asked for a blanket as a gift because I was perpetually cold and I didn't have enough bedding. That memory - and the fact that my mother gave me a hand me down blanket that was in the color scheme and size of her king sized bed, despite the fact that I had a double bed, means that I got her cast-offs, despite my parents' ability to afford more - made me patient as we shopped the aisles of Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, and IKEA, debating each item extensively before finding just the right ones or sighing and searching again on Amazon.

Loading up the back of the Subaru with blue zippered IKEA bags, driving over the mountains, and having the usual comedy of building an IKEA side table and unpacking everything together was just as I'd dreamed. I made up her bed with the topper, the blush sheets, the pretty duvet, the piles of throw pillows (which she arranged and rearranged until they looked just right). We probably looked like caricatures of a college day mom and daughter: she in her Central crop top, me in my baggy CWU Mom sweatshirt, smiling and sweaty and sometimes on the edge of tears, with lots of hugs. When I left that night she gave me a carved jade heart and some heartfelt words, and our hug was extra long. When I got in the car to drive home alone, I played Taylor Swift and sang loudly, waiting for my tears to come... but they didn't. I was happy. My girl was where she needed to be, and she knew how deeply I love her, and the future awaited both of us.

I know I sent too much. Her first aid supplies alone could probably cover the entire floor of her dorm for a year. She could have holed up and lived on the snacks she got started with without ever leaving to get food. I'm pretty sure she never read any of the novels she brought with her, but as a fellow book nerd I knew how important it was to have them tucked onto her bedside table shelves.

No regrets. 

We send each other cards and letters at least weekly. I display mine on top of our piano (displaying cards is its only use since Tessa decided, a decade ago, that piano wasn't her thing).

When she's gone I collect little things for her and place them in her room: a new pack of masks, snacks, a sundress for our summer trip, new bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I send her texts every day without expectation that I'll get a response because I know she needs her independence, but I also know she needs my love notes, and I often get a response anyway.

This is better than I expected.

The house isn't empty, because she comes home every few weeks to visit (make no mistake - her local boyfriend is more of a draw than I am - but that's okay, because I get the benefit of her visit anyway).

I am not sad the way that some of the parenting websites told me I'd be. I do not sleep in her bed, wrapped around her pillow. I do not long for crumbs on the counter or dishes on the sink. I long for this: I long for what I've got. I long for her to know that she's got my full support. I long for her to feel safe, protected, but also capable of handling what life throws at her. I long to be her safe space to return to. But I also long for witnessing her as she grows wings. She's thinking of a semester abroad. She might move to California when she graduates. She doesn't think she wants to be a mom even when she's older. She has her own ideas of life, some of which I find exhilarating, and some of which make me worry, but all of which belong to her. 

One of my parents' angry threats to me when I was a teen was "you'll see when you're older!" and "just you wait!" I did wait. I got older. And what I learned was that my feelings of craving wings to fly were completely normal and natural, and that what every kid wants most in the world is the encouragement to fly and the certainty that a loving nest awaits them if they want to visit. I wasn't being selfish, or mean, or unloving, or ungrateful when I wanted a different life than the one my parents envisioned for me, I was just - living. Being myself, not them. Finding my own way. Every time they told me that my way of living was wrong, I yearned to fly farther away. Every time they clipped my wings, I flapped them harder, trying to make up for my lost feathers by expending more energy.

Parenting my daughter through each stage of her life has been healing and eye opening. 

My nest is empty-ish. But I'm happy, because I didn't raise my daughter to stay home with me until she was old, I raised her to go out and seek out her own dreams, and that is what she's doing. When I buy her little necessitates, or send her love notes, or encourage her to follow her dreams even when they're not mine, I'm really parenting myself too, reminding myself that this is what I deserved, too.

The more freedom I give her, the more I support her dreams, the closer we become. I honestly didn't see that one coming, even though it should have been obvious. My parents held me tight to a vision I didn't share, and I suffocated and struggled to break free of the confines of their vision; I gave my daughter space to figure out her own path and called out my support, and she has opened up to me in return. So obvious once I see it, but such a journey to get to this place.

My nest doesn't feel empty, even though it is. It feels like home. It feels like a soft place to land. It feels full of possibility.

Right now it's time for me to work on developing my own wings. Sometimes I feel jealous of my daughter - not for her youth and beauty, but for the possibilities that lie ahead of her. And then I remember that it's not too late for me, and that I can still recreate myself a hundred times over, and that just as she's got me cheering her on and believing in her with all my heart, she's cheering for me and believing in me, too. I can hear her shouting "Fly, Mom! You can do it!"

I didn't expect that. 

I'm still working on finding my way. I haven't got it all figured out AT ALL.

But watching my daughter spread her wings gives me strength to remember how to fly. I see her circling our nest, riding the currents on her wings, and I hear her call to come join her in the sky. We won't always fly together, or in the same direction, and I need to make sure not to crowd her up there - the sky is big enough to give her space - but after years of sitting on my nest, tending to my little baby bird, it's clear that we're both ready to soar.

It's terrifying and exhilarating. But I'm ready.