Long Time Since We've Talked

Dear Yuppie Girl;

Hello, my little cupcake!  It's been a long time since we've chatted this way!  Since we both agreed that we need to catch Generation Gap Girls up, I thought I'd start with a question you asked me the other day. 

Now that Mr. Rural and I are officially empty-nesters, you asked me if the adjustment to an empty nest was anything like the adjustment it took when our nest first had a baby bird in it.

Maybe in some ways there is a similarity.  Each change requires a rethinking of your priorities, and your time and your MONEY!  But that's where the commonality ends.

Having a baby is actually a lot of pretty small incremental steps to change.  You bring home this tiny, needful bundle of funny smells and unusual sounds, and your heart just swells with love of the most profound sort.  He sleeps a lot, and you do too at first because it was so much work to get him here.  Your family and friends gather around and bring you meals, maybe.  But the biggest change is the multiplication of love that happens so suddenly.  It's you, your beloved and your darling baby.  Babies needs are so simple at first, and you're content to just hold them for hour after hour.

Their needs grow as they do, and then they reach the tipping point:  right around 16 years old, their needs start to wane.  They start taking care of themselves more.  At least, that's what they think.  Mom and Dad still think they need a lot of advice and guidance, which falls on their deaf teenage ears, which makes us talk more, which makes them listen less.

And then they're gone.  Even if it takes them a month to actually move all of their belongings, they themselves are there and then not.  Off in their own life.  Responsible for their own decisions.  Did they listen to the lectures?  Mom and Dad don't know because teenagers are MASTERS at the poker-face.

We're proud of our baby birds, and we feel good about where they will go in their lives.  We have high expectations and we are excited for them.  They are embarking on the most exciting times of their lives.  We just have to have faith that we did a good job raising them and that they got all the lessons they needed.

Was it the same level of adjustment?  Not really.  I think the power of parental love makes filling the nest an easy transition, and that same parental love makes emptying the nest a wrenching experience.  And this too, shall pass.  :-)

Love,
Rural Mom