Easy vs. hard, but actually

Two nights ago, after the last game of the middle school volleyball season - a sport we knew virtually nothing about until the beginning of this academic year - Aidy sat down on our bedroom floor and lamented that it was over, and went on to list what’s now become a growing list of lamentations: that the summer was long gone, that Nora lives in Ohio, that she’s done with elementary school and, now, volleyball.

She is emotional in ways that make sense to me for a child who so happens to be so in tune with her own and everyone else’s emotions (which she is) and in ways that I that surprise me; ways that surpass her age and expected maturity level. Like she’s seeing the world how an old woman might, with all the joy and melancholy that comes with truly knowing how brief and beautiful it is. This one life.

And not to gloss over Aidy’s particular magic but the truth is she is magical, you know, often. How we are all the way we are on a regular basis. And on this particular night I had just gotten into bed after a very long, difficult day of work. I was settled with the latest in the series of fairy books I have unexpectedly become obsessed with (thank you, Shanna!) and thinking that my parenting was over for the day. Not that I, instead, was going to have to coach my youngest through an adolescent crisis.

Which brings me to the point I want to try to make this morning - succinctly if I can, and I never really can - sitting here with my coffee in a quiet house and feeling this particular point so deeply, especially now, as the days turn colder and our lives turn more inward.

It’s something I’ve written about more than once (but with over 20 years of these posts, can’t remember quite when) and that’s the choice between what is easier, and what is more difficult. How we get this wrong a lot.

I was talking to Nora about this very issue the other day on the phone, as we chatted about habits, how a bad one (scrolling our phones incessantly) can lead to another (my mindlessly eating really a lot of cookies leftover from the PTSA bake sale, which happened to be conveniently stored in my car, instead of doing what I should have done, which is finding myself a snack when I needed one; to be abundantly clear - you should eat as many cookies as you want, but I think we all can agree there is a point where the pleasure becomes pain…with social media and with the treats, too).

How those less ideal choices - skipping the workout; staying in our sweatpants that aren’t even the super comfortable ones because you also are very behind on the laundry; using AI instead of writing it yourself; missing the night out with friends when you could have talked through these very stresses - feels easier.

Less energy, more “comfortable,” but not really. Verses more energy…and feeling more energetic.

And how this pertains to bigger things too: not having the hard personal conversation; not having the hard professional one; stalling on buckling down and making the potentially life-changing decision. Not to get all high and mighty, but failing to put down the distractions and look around and feel it all.

Seems easier. But, in fact, is not. That’s the harder, lesser life. The smaller, cursory choice.

Which brings me back to Aidy, sitting on my bedroom floor, and me, wanting so badly to be done with thinking and talking, fading fast into that part of the night where I am only capable of reading a few pages, then watching five minutes of the “Slow Horses” episode I’ve been trying to finish for the past week (sorry, J) before I can’t fight it anymore and fall asleep.

But trying to ward off this 12-year-old, all glassy-eyed and big hearted, that was the more difficult choice. So I opened up, asked her to say more, and, dear god, she got into the bed. Her father told her it was going to be ok, then her near tears became summersaults. We eventually, gently, told her to please “get out” and go to sleep. Dealing with the situation was obviously the right choice. But also, it was easier than evading it.

Just one more example. Maisie, poor thing, has been wondering what the everliving hell is up. With one child - gone! And the youngest one now taking a bus to some middle school she can’t even see, when she and I walked her to the school down the road nearly every day for seven years. She stands at the front door in the mornings waiting for everything to go back to the way it was, which is undoubtedly tragic. So I decided that Aidy and I could start walking to her at the bus stop. At 7 am.

7 am! When, otherwise I could be pouring myself a little more coffee, both kids out the door, embracing the quiet. Easier, that’s what I think to myself.

This morning, though, walking back from the bus stop, Maisie’s happy’s trot by my side proof that routine is crucial to a joyful life (is what she would say, if she could speak), I looked at the rainbow of fall-colored trees along the street perpendicular to our own, and how the moon was still up, challenging the early morning slant of sun. I asked myself: could there be a better start to the day than this? How could anything be simpler?

empti(er) nest

Something I’ve learned over the past month or so is how similar “Gabe” and “Aide” (as in, short for Aidy, which is often what I call our youngest child, especially when trying to get her out the door to somewhere she imminently needs to be) sound and how, almost like we are in a comedy troupe, when I call out for one, the other will nearly always answer instead. This necessitates my saying, “No, I was talking to your brother/sister,” which negates the point of the nicknames altogether because now we are all confused and having an entire conversation.

That they sound alike isn’t new, but somehow, without Nora here, this is a new problem. Maybe having her name among the chorus of calls upstairs, a regular occurrence in our household (“we’ve got to GO!”) clarified things? I don’t even know how it would. All I know is that this is one of the many ways life is different now, since taking our oldest child to college.

Like many, I tend to judge my own life circumstances against others’, and this life transition has been no exception. Nora left, but we still have two at home, I say, pointing out that proper empty nesters must be feeling it so much harder. And I think that’s likely accurate, but - of course! - there are feelings no matter what and the shift in family dynamics when the oldest child leaves can be quite formidable on its own.

Let me tell you what kind of formidable it was for me. Dropping Nora off as a family in late August, spending a night on the picturesque campus, eating in the dining hall and exploring the nearby town was a joy; to be there for a moment, in her new world. But when we spent two nights in New York State after, celebrating Aidy’s birthday and softening the blow of the return home (riding bikes along Canandaigua Lake, I wanted to shout to the locals who smiled at us while walking their dogs, “There are five of us in this family, actually!”) - and once we got back - where I stood in the kitchen making dinner with no teenage girl there at the end of the counter chattering away - my mind couldn’t quite grasp it…my body even. I felt unexpectedly panicky, like my nervous system didn’t comprehend the situation. Like the physical distance in mileage suddenly made itself clear. I was earnestly sad. Unlike the bittersweet nostalgia that marked senior year. This was sad sad. Like, oh no, what??

I cried on and off for a few days including most of one long, disrupted night, and then, as though I was going through some catalogue of prescribed motions for the new college mom, fell into a sound sleep the following evening and woke up steady. Excited. For Nora. For us. Curious about the new shape of our life. I felt celebratory and aware that this seeming loss was, in fact, an accomplishment.

The positive feelings have only grown (although I will add that one thing new college freshman excel at is calling you to express minor or more significant discontent, hanging up the phone and getting fully, exuberantly over it, but failing to update you that, in fact, they are now having the time of their lives). Nora weaved her way through the expected novelty and doubt of her first couple weeks and landed all involved and giddy one month in. How she sounds, I’ve told people when they ask how she is doing, is deeply happy.

This story, my newly-eighteen-year-old daughter’s, is hers, but the accompanying parental contentedness is notable, solid in a way that feels right: to be an observer of her life, not a part-time orchestrator. She’s joined multiple singing groups, is making late night snacks with her roommate, and oh! there’s a recording studio on campus. Asking questions in every class and writing op-eds and features about local music for the college newspaper (our guitar playing, journalistic child, I told J…she is you and me).

The most important point, I think, is the newly-gained independence these excited updates suggest, the fostering of lasting friendships these experiences allow.

For us (and I’m not sure how to say this without making it sound like we don’t miss her, which is certainly not the case) her newly-gained-and-growing independence is like a well-earned gift to close out this tearjerker of a process. There was a recent clip of Michelle Obama where she said she liked launching her kids out into the world, because not having to worry about their whereabouts, their everyday whatever, was such a relief. There was more room for herself, for everything else.

Not that there won’t be worry or angst or the kind of parenting that involves my whole soul again. But more room, while watching, delighted, from afar: this is exactly how I feel.

And here at home, we are forging new rhythms of our own.

What I imagined was that that not having Nora here would feel unfamiliar in a way that had no recourse. Aidy and Gabe would squabble incessantly, I wouldn’t know who to look to for sympathy when they did, the dog would wonder why everything was different and pace the house forever trying to figure it out.

But as we all know, humans are remarkably adaptable (dogs, too). And this transition for the remaining four of us has been - besides completely do-able - fascinating. Truly, that’s the word.

Fascinating to watch Gabe observe Aidy crying in the seat next to him on our car ride following the drop off (Aidy, who has absorbed this change much less readily than the rest of us, maybe because of her young age, the seemingly endless years she still has in this house, telling me, “it just doesn’t make sense that Nora lived here all my life, and now she doesn’t), then suggest gently that they watch an episode of “The Office” that night; to watch her sit up and wipe away her tears and nod her head yes.

For me to come home from work and find Gabe, just back from cross country practice, in the kitchen eating an amount of food pulled from the refrigerator equivalent to a full dinner ahead of our actual dinner. To ask him about his day and hear a funny story about something a teacher said in class, and how he and his friends couldn’t look at each other because they’d lose it (which is how I spent many classroom hours during my own high school years). There’s more attention for the taking now, and that feels right, too. It’s Gabe’s turn for the after school at-the-counter chatter.

How Aidy turned to me the other day in the car, after changing the music from whatever fuzzy shoegaze anthem I had on to Gracie Abrams, and said: listen, we’re the only girls in the house now and we are going to get our nails done then get cozy and have a spa night at home. We decided we are going to begin watching the“The Gilmore Girls” together this fall because, somehow, I never did, and despite the fact that we both aren’t sure “it’s our vibe.”

That I started to climb the stairs last night to tell these two kids, partners in rivalry and friendship, that it was way too late for them to be up on a school night, but heard them laughing over some shared moment, so I retreated quietly back down.

When we were on our mini vacation in New York, we paused on the trail during our bike ride and looked out over the expansive body of water. J said, “It’s weird how lakes are self-contained. Like they are their own thing, with borders.” I thought, “what in the world,” and without needing any practice in his new role as oldest child at home, announcer of the ridiculous, Gabe gave me the side eye, and said to his father, “Well. That’s what lakes are.” J tried to explain himself. But we were already laughing.