All five of our children are adults. They all have lives that no longer center on this home or us, their parents.
Four of the five have their own homes, and the fifth is a fiercely independent young woman with a full-time job, an active social life, and a delightful boyfriend (who may get a name here on this blog at some point). It's more like having a roommate than still having a child at home. She's not a child, and she doesn't behave like a child.
The realization that we're "empty nesters" wasn't a kick in the gut for us. It was actually a delightful epiphany that we could just decide, on a whim, to drive to Montreal for an overnight stay at a luxury hotel near the Notre-Dame Basilica, just the two of us, without worrying about leaving the kids Home Alone.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the direction my life has taken. It's been a crazy rollercoaster ride, and it was, in its turn, excruciatingly slow and so quick, I actually did miss it.
A lot has changed, for me, in the past ten years.
Ten years ago, three of my five children were adults. Two years later, I would start working outside the home for the first time in 20 years. Two years after that, the world would experience a Global Pandemic. Two years later, I would be working at what, to date, is the best job I've ever had, and two years after that, in what's proven to be a very poor decision, I'm back working at that place where I ended my 20+ year reign as a WAHM.
And there was a whole lot of extra and in between and since then that's happened and upended my life and my beliefs and the very foundation on which I had built so much when it was decided that I would be settling here and started trying to grow roots - both figuratively and literally.
That's normal, right?
It's normal to go through massive changes in one's life. To believe in something so strongly that one molds one's entire existence around those beliefs and then, have those beliefs challenged and ultimately upended
sometimes pretty abruptly
sometimes in incredibly painful ways
sometimes as just a whimper, like a stubbed toe, but the memory of which catches one wincing and taking care in a dark room
My life, like everyone's, has had some pretty high-highs and an equal share of abysmal lows.
There are, of course, things that happened that were pretty monumental in the moment and have absolutely affected how I live my life today.
Aren't there always?
Back in the day, I was a prepper. Just about everything I did revolved around the idea that life as we know it wasn't sustainable, and the fear that something really catastrophic was going to happen at any second now, and the hope that I could be ready for it when it did happen.
That's how I raised my kids - with the hope that if the shit, really did, hit the fan, they would have the skills and the tools to survive, to take care of themselves.
And then, they grew up, and in spite of global climate change and massive storms that destroyed whole communities, astronomical gas prices that resulted in national supply chain interruptions, crop failures, resource wars, and a Global Pandemic, none of those singular events created the predicted apocalypse that so many of us were sure we'd see in our lifetimes.
It's exhausting to stay on the prepper wheel, just running in place, and never getting anywhere.
And so I jumped off the wheel, for the most part, when my kids all got old enough to take care of themselves, and here we are.
I work outside the home full-time these days doing the type of job I went to college to avoid.
Life can be a mean bitch.
Having this job has impacted my ability to continue doing those prepper activities that were so much a part of who I was and what I believed ten years ago.
My mom asked me recently what I was canning, and the answer is nothing, really. I make sauerkraut fairly regularly, using a bagged coleslaw mix from the grocery store.
My garden this year was mostly herbs, flowers, tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli. Some of which I'm still harvesting. Some of it is in the freezer, but mostly, we ate what I grew and harvested. There wasn't really much left to preserve for winter. It was a small garden.
My neighbor brought us maple syrup, peaches, and grapes. We've already eaten all of the maple syrup. I fermented the peaches, and we have grape juice in the refrigerator.
I haven't made soap in more than a year. Thankfully, I found a commercial brand that I'm not allergic to.
We bought wood for our woodstove a couple of weeks ago and spent a whole weekend stacking it - mostly just me and Deus Ex Machina, and during those three days, I often wondered, how many more seasons we would do that work, and then, spend the winter struggling to keep the house warmed by the woodstove, while we're gone all day at work.
I miss doing the work of living, which I had to trade for the work of earning. I like earning a lot less than living.
I feel like I'm in an in-between season. Is that a thing?
I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I only know that it's not what I'm doing right now.
On the flipside, I'm so close to retirement age that I can see a pin-prick of light.
But with so many years still left to go until I get to end of the tunnel, I still have to do something.
THIS is never where I imagined I would be five decades into life. I thought I would have it all figured by now.
I've updated my blog header. I reached out to my lovely, extremely talented young friend (and a former homeschool student) for a custom drawing. Her instructions were to build on the squirrel theme (there used to be a "housewife squirrel" in my header), but instead of a housewife, which I no longer am, I told her the squirrel needed to be a wild, gray-haired old lady in a leather jacket driving a sports car - or a blue jay, as it turns out (the sports car is blue, after all!).
I love the new design.
And I'm looking forward to figuring out what this new me, this new place, will be.
I hope you'll stick around. It's gonna be a fun ride ... I hope.
