Through phone calls and e-mails and listening to my mortifying mistakes, my mother counseled me through my shaky adjustment from high school to college. Now it’s my turn to help her.
When I was a freshman, I awoke each morning to a stomach full of anxiety and a head full of worries. There was something about the smell of August mornings that sent my nerves whirling. There was something about dropping more than one loaded dinner tray in a crowded dining hall that was just plain embarrassing.
I made a 20-item list titled “Why I Should Transfer Schools.” I was homesick. I missed my brothers, my New York home and life as I had left it.
Lonesome, I called Mom with daily reports and many, many tears. She responded with comforting praise and care. She sent e-mails solid with support and news from home. Mom said all the right things. Don’t be afraid to meet new people. Everyone is in the same boat. I had heard the advice before, but I needed to hear it again. After all, I was just one of millions who would start college that year. And like the millions of others, I would survive.
So I joined a ballroom-dancing club, threw pottery and played flute in the university band. Before long, I could go hours—even days—without calling home. As the sun went down each evening, my self-confidence went up. This was a big step for the girl used to framing each day with parental conversations.
Leaving Mom meant leaving my best friend, a title she earned sometime between after-school snacks and summertime sloe gin fizzes by the pool. When I was 14, Mom went back to work after a 14-year hiatus from accounting. Grandpa was her boss, her hours were part-time, and she got home just an hour after me. But I felt something was missing, as if Mom leaving during the day made home a different place on my return. Now it’s my turn to leave.
The day after my parents dropped their last baby off for his freshman year of college, Mom awoke to a stomach full of anxiety and a head full of worries. She says something is missing, as if my being gone makes home a different place on her return. She misses her kids, a home full of bodies and life as she’s known it for nearly 21 years. Lonesome, she calls my brothers and me with daily reports and many, many tears. You’ll be fine, I told Mom in conversations turned weepy I-miss-yous. Don’t be afraid to meet new people, I said, repeating the advice she gave me four falls earlier.
Every parent goes through the same thing, I said. You’re all in the same boat. So Mom and Dad took a week’s vacation. They left the house, left the state and visited college friends. Mom has started Sunday-morning bike rides with her sister. She signed an eight-month gym contract to have someplace to go, something to do. “Well, you’ve got to start somewhere,” Mom says of her efforts to embrace her new freedom, find a new hobby, learn to adjust.
Mom learned to adjust. She likes that her children no longer covet her Mustang convertible. She likes that soda lasts for days. That groceries, too, have extended lives. That there are no extra shoes in the entrance, no laundry in the basement, no litter in the hallway. Yes, Mom learned to like the prospects of a near-empty house. She likes it so much that it had been four days since last she e-mailed, longer since a phone call.
Then a note came in the mail: “Dear Laura, Having fun and getting used to empty-nest syndrome. The mess in the kitchen is no bigger when we get home. Love you mean it, Mom.” My mom is just one of the millions whose children leave the nest each year. One of the millions who experience the anxiety, the loneliness—and the great promise—of an “empty nest.” And, like the millions of others, she too will survive.
