My son told me the other day that his youngest boy is moving out and now it’s just his wife and him alone in the house. He mentioned that it wasn’t just another empty bedroom in their house that was happening; it also, was going to be a much quieter house. Then he said wistfully, “ That is, if a quieter house is what you’re looking for.” I said, “You and your wife should be proud that he is going to be missed that much. It says to me, you did a good job.”
It’s a pensive moment when you look into your kids rooms and realize there never coming back to it. You see the football pennants on the wall in his room and the shelves full of model cars and planes. Or across the hall, a room with a four-poster canopy bed, laden down with stuffed animals and pom poms, mementos from your little girl who is s now a young lady, with her eyes set on the future. You’ve joked with your spouse along the way about making her room into a gym that you probably wouldn’t use anyway or maybe a craft room for her, who’s not sure if she wants to go that route either. Maybe it’s time for a smaller home-- but moving? How do you say goodbye to all your friends and neighbors you’ve known for 20 years?
Life has all of these teaching moments you can read about and I can write about but in the end you have to live them to appreciate what they really are all about. Along with your newfound freedom comes a sense of, “What do I do now?” As much as you didn’t want to admit it, you enjoyed the responsibility of taking this child down that path to adulthood. Watching them be self-sufficient and hopefully being more then you ever dreamed they could be. But now tonight, here you and her sit at a dining room table with six chairs and stare at each other and those empty chairs seem to say, “What has just happened here?”
As humans we’re unique in the animal kingdom when it comes to rearing our young, as we usually get only one go around. For some, one time is plenty thank you but for others it’s a poignant moment. The end of an era and to my line of thinking, the most important era in the litany of family life. What can be more important then preparing our kids for their life as adults?
For all intensive purposes, we can only teach our young the basics. That often comes along from a time-honored tradition that came from our parents and grandparents. But the world changes everyday and in ways we only dreamed would happen, because we never experienced or even thought of everything they are going to experience today. And so we ask. “Did we cover all the bases or not.” Time will tell and all you can do is say to them. “You know what, I know your anxious to go out there and make us proud but if the roadblocks sometimes seem insurmountable, we don’t burn bridges in this family we just build them stronger. We weren’t just a family for eighteen years, we will always be a family and who knows, next time we talk-- I may be the one asking you for advice.”
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