There’s been a lot going on this year—mostly good, but not all of it. Normally, I cope. Normally, I feel good about the good things, but I’ve had trouble feeling good at all this year, about anything. I think I’ve worked out why:
I don’t like this new phase of our life, the one where the kids leave home. It’s not so much that I miss the daughter who has left—although I do—or that I’ll miss the others when they leave—I know I will—it’s that it signifies the end of an era for our family. And it’s been a good era, a great era. In fact, it’s been the happiest era of my life and I don’t want it to end.
I’m not one for change at the best of times, even when it’s a good change. On holiday, I’m always the first to want to come home. When I was at school, it took me a while to adjust to a new classroom and a new teacher—I spent the first few weeks wishing I was back with the old one. When I started Uni, I wanted to go back to school. When I first became a mother, I wanted to go back to just my husband and me. Each time I brought home a new baby, I spent the first few weeks wanting my old family back, the one in which I knew all the children.
Now, those baby-birthing, child-rearing years are fast coming to a close and it’s way too soon. I’m not ready. I know it happens in every family and I know I’m not the first mother to feel like this. I know I’ll have to adjust, and in time I will. But, to be completely honest, I’m not very happy about it.
I have loved the years of being a mother, with all of my children around me. I have delighted in watching our little people grow up— watching bandy legs scurrying up a hall become long limbs that lope down a cricket pitch; feeling little arms slide around my neck and watching those same arms pull water down a pool; hearing tentative, mispronounced words become sentences, then stories. I’ve even enjoyed extracting still-full lunch boxes from school bags each evening, driving a people-mover for three hours in the afternoons as I ferry kids hither and thither across town, and standing huddled under an umbrella by the side of a hockey pitch on a Saturday. The tears and the tantrums, the getting up in the middle of the night, the times I craved peace and quiet, the times I wanted just five minutes on my own, have faded from my memory.
And I’ve forgotten how many times I wished they’d hurry and grow up so I could have my life back. Now, here it is, my life is returning, and all I can think about is how much I want those little people with me always.
Ever since I met my husband, life has been good. There’s always been something to look forward to—our graduations, our wedding, a baby, more babies, first teeth, first steps, first days of school … It’s been one momentous event after another, each day bringing something new or nice—a smile, a cuddle, a moment I want to bottle.
And each year has been better than the last. Until this one, that is. It’s hit me that these years are all coming to an end.
I know there’ll be lots of good times ahead—our children’s graduations, their weddings, their babies—but I will miss the days when I had little and not-so-little people in my home.
(Listen to me, already missing them and I still have three at home. *blows nose*)
I’ll get used to it—this is life and it moves on. Sometimes, though, I want to wind back the clock and do it all over again.
Thanks for listening—I feel better already. I’ve taken my new babies (our dogs) for a walk, now I sit here in my attic, sipping my peppermint tea and typing on my keyboard. I know life is good and I suspect that a few years from now, I’ll look back on this next phase of our lives and blink away a tear as I say they were the best years of my life.
Fabulous post Louise – I am sure many mums (and some dads) will relate to some or all of this depending on what age their own children are. I love the pic too!
Thanks, Jacquie! My son is worried people will really think I put my kids in a bottle!
Kids leaving home is much harder than I ever thought it would be …
How gorgeous!
I am sure I can’t imagine how difficult it will be! The distance must enhance the loss, although I bet it would be tough either way.
It doesn’t help that she’s on the other side of the country, that’s for sure. But it’s not that—it’s what it signifies: the beginning of the end of this phase. Then a new phase will open, and I’m sure it will be wonderful …
Blimey Charlie, Louise. you’ve made me cry. Mine are nearly 5 and nearly 7, and I can so picture everything you say.
Sorry, Lily. Everyone tells you how fast it will go and you nod and smile and don’t believe them. But, believe me—it passes so quickly. You’ll be at my stage in the blink of an eye. Savour every moment, and then some. You can never savour it too much!
Louise, in my family, we talk often about Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days (from the title of the wonderful children’s book, ‘Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day’, published in 1972 by Judith Voist, the American feminist). We know that ‘some days are like that, even in Timbucktu’. And some years are like that as well. Painful, horrible days, or years to be endured.
One of my most painful years was when my oldest daughter opted to live with her father when she was fourteen. He forbade her to even see me for a few years. It was as if something had gouged a hole in my heart. But of course I survived, and I rejoice that she and I have been close friends for decades.
I am blessed with the friendship of my adult children, and to enjoy their companionship, love and kindness. It feels like a (parenting) job well done. We actually grow our children up in order for them to separate from us, to become the adult people they are meant to be. Painful, but necessary. That sounds like a homily, but I can’t think of any way to tell you I understand some of the pain of separation from children that comes before a new phase in our mother-lives.
Tomorrow my great-granddaughter Elizabeth will spend the day with me, and I’m planning wonderful things to do with a three-year-old with her arm in a caste because she fell and broke two bones. We will have the best time together, just the two of us! I can hardly wait.
It’s so nice to read this, Maureen. I’m so glad you’re able to get such enjoyment from your great-granddaughter. It’s nice to hear first-hand that there is life-after-the-kids-move-out!
I know every mother on the planet has had to do this at some stage, but I can honestly say that I wasn’t prepared to feel like this and for so long—I should have known better. It’s more to do with the closing of the era, I think. And that it’s been the happiest time of my life, especially compared to some of the other ‘eras’ of my life beforehand.
See Kahlil Gibran on children, from ‘The Prophet’. But yes, missing them is all a part of it. And perhaps not all of them will move interstate…???
I have ‘The Prophet’ and I love it. It’s one thing to know this intellectually—it’s quite another to experience it emotionally. As I’ve said, every mother on the planet has gone through it and it’s the way it is meant to be. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I’m still feeling the loss of those happy years.
Yes, hopefully I might be able to keep some of the others at home a bit longer. Say, ’til they’re sixty or so …
As usual you have expressed the emotional upheaval so well I can feel your pain. If you don’t become a famous writer, then there is something wrong with people. Unlike you, Louise, I enjoy change — the chance to do something different. I was also raised in a happy family who basically taught me the kindest thing you can do for your kids is to teach them to be independent and then let them go. So Philosophically, we are so very different. But you will find when you become a grandmother that that is the best relationship of all. Congrats on being able to express yourself so beautifully.
Thanks for your comments, Betty. I’d love to be someone that enjoyed change, but I never really have, and I’m getting worse as I age! I love routine—yes, I know, I’m very boring!
I don’t know that we are philosophically poles apart on the issue of raising kids to be independent and letting them go, as that’s what I believe, too. I would never stop them going, and I’m very proud of the people they’re becoming. It just makes me wistful and sad to see them grow up …
My babies finished school last year and I find myself nostalgically watching primary school kids traipsing around with their mothers doing the after school shopping and feeling teary. Mind you I couldn’t wait for them to finish, get driver’s licences and be independent. I miss them being around all the time but other joys are on the way. Watching them flower into mature, empathetic, kind individuals, establishing careers, finding partners and eventually producing gorgeous, chubby babies I can spoil and smother. It’s the cycle of life 🙂
Yes, you’d be confronted with it every day in your line of work! It’s exactly as you say: the cycle of life and the way nature intended. We really wouldn’t have it any other way. Really. It’s lovely that despite knowing we will miss them, we don’t try and stop them doing what they should be doing—growing up and becoming independent.
Lovely, Louise. Mine are a decade ahead of yours, and as you’ve predicted it’s a different kind of precious; first loves, first jobs, second jobs, big steps into life and all the rest. These amazing people who are our children are rather fabulous to know. I just read your “my Husband” section – bottle him too! It took me two goes to get a good one (and two of my three are his/theirs, since she and her second husband part of the picture too) – worth bottling? Hell yes, the whole big, mad, ramble of it!
PS – that child-shaped hole thats left behind when they move out is very hard, a n aching thing for quite some time, but then it gradually gets filled with astonishment when they do things like invite you dinner at THEIR place 🙂
I love that description—’child-shaped hole’. That’s exactly what it is!
I’m glad you found someone worth bottling! You’ve actually stated something very true: we love our kids even more as they get older. Whilst I have thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of them growing up, you’re right, we admire and respect them even more as they mature. They’re miraculous, aren’t they?
Agree with Karen. I’m at the stage where ours, his and mine, are the nicest young people I’ve ever known and I’m still astonished that I/we had a part in growing them to this level of general niceness as human beings. That’s not to say I’m not constantly thinking of ways to make them come back and live with us again. Bottle them in your heart and they’ll always be there, Louise xx
I love that concept, Rashida—’bottle them in your heart’—and that’s exactly what I’ll do. And keep looking at old photos and video …
I don’t know if you’ve ever mentioned this before but, given your aversion to change, how did you feel about moving from Tassie to WA when it happened? And have your feelings changed since then?
Actually, I don’t think I have talked about when we left Tassie. It took me about 3 years to adjust and accept WA as home. We’d packed up our Hobart home on 5th January, in a storm and 11ºC, and arrived in Perth on 6th January, to 35º sunshine. My husband decided that we were staying as soon as he stepped onto the tarmac …
A year or two later, I remember watching an ABC documentary on the Tasmanian wilderness photographers Peter Dombrovskis and Olegas Truchanis, both of whom died in Tasmania’s southwest.
I turned to my husband and said, ‘Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t you miss it?’
‘No,’ was his prompt reply.
And that was it …
Ha ha! Hilarious. Almost like “Let us never speak of living there again, Louise.” “Oh, but you must miss it a little bit.” “Goddamnit, I said no!”
Reminds me of a working trip I once made up to Thevenard Island (just off Barrow.) It was July, and the weather (and the food) were gorgeous. And the food was free. I flew back home to darkness, pouring rain, a head cold, and (relatively) rubbish food that was hugely overpriced…
My father comes from Ballarat, another famous ‘cold spot’. He had a romantic notion of going back there to live for a year, just to see if he could cope with the weather. The last time my parents went there – for a visit, not for a year – it only got down to 13 degrees before they had to buy mittens. Even I’ve been there when it’s been colder than that! I’ll never forget the sight of teenage girls wearing crop tops in the middle of Ballarat in a fog. It was about 10 degrees, and their skins were so white you could see the veins in their arms….
I know what you’re saying. Whenever I go back to Tassie and see people in t-shirts and thongs, while I’m rugged up in layers and wool. But once upon a time, I dressed like that, too. You get used to it …