NEW YEAR'S MUSINGS

I feel quite like an outsider as I read the wonderful blogs that I follow. I am the minority, as it seems, in blog land. I am in the transitional phase between mommy and empty nester. I confess that I hate the term and the very soon occurrence of the same. How I yearn, as I read these blogs, for my own now grown little people. How I desire those times past when I was able to stay at home and be a homeschooling mommy, a homemaker, a wife. Meals were made with love, and the house was cleaned and organized often. There are more remorses that I have that, due to causing undo hurt on others, I may not mention here. But, they are real, and they are very hurtful. They lend to the sadness I carry.

I very much dislike this passageway I find myself in and for the moment at least feel as though it leads only to much loneliness. After this comes old age and aloneness. An empty house is not ok with me. I want my children around. I want my family. I want activity and love. I very much do not want the empty shell that is soon to arrive. Never did I look forward to the day when my children would all be gone. Sure, I dreamed of not being so tied down and did indeed look forward to the days of “freedom”. I do enjoy certain aspects that come with not being a steward of little people. I do enjoy not having all of the tie downs that kids’ activities bring, that teenagers engage in, and others. But, all in all, I am very saddened by it all. By May 1st, my daughter and friend will have moved out. They are adults and need to move on with their lives, but couldn’t it be different? Couldn’t they just stay? Couldn’t we be as those souls in other countries who live together as family…forever…taking care of one another? My boy, too, will leave this Spring. He’ll be gone for two years and then back for a little season. He then will be on with his own life.

There is just something so final about it all. For all of these years, I was someone’s mommy, someone’s caregiver. Now, it will be just my husband and me. He, of course, is quite looking forward to the day. I am quite dreading it. Did I sign up for this when I married and started my family? I suppose I did, but I was so very involved in having those precious babies and caring for their every need that this day was eons away.

As I read these blogs that talk of having new little ones, homeschooling, and mothering, I am touched with a bitter finger on my heart. I do not desire to be here. I do not desire to be at the threshold of old age. While that is yet quite a ways down the road, it too will be here in the blinking of an eye, and I do not want to be the old woman who is but swept to the corner of life, only now to observe what she used to partake of—that of the motherhood she so enjoyed. Yet…I AM here, and I must make the very best of it. I must forge ahead into that cloudy abyss that I wish to shrink from. It is a time of transition, a time to allow this struggle to strengthen me. And so I shall.