by Steven Harris | submitted on January 25, 2006
My wife and I both work full time. It’s Sunday morning and it is my wife’s busy season and she is at work. I just got up, it’s 10 AM. I go over to the couch and lay down asking myself, “What’s wrong with me?”
As I look ahead to the next 8 weekends alone It dawns on me my youngest, who is now 18 and a half, won’t be around either. After an hour of laying on the couch being a bed for my 2 cats I decide to go on-line. As I launch my browser I get the idea to look up a phrase I’ve been thinking about for a while “Empty Nest”.
As I search I wonder could this apply to me? I find http://www.emptynestsupport.com/ and start reading. As I read things I had not though about it hits me and I begin to cry. My daughter is 26 and has been out of the house for a while. She is doing so well she is thinking of moving from her apartment, which is less than a mile from home, to another state out of New England. My Son, my youngest, is in college, has a job and a girlfriend! Sure he still lives at home but pretty much all we do is pass in the hall late at night while I’m going to bed and he’s just getting in. The days of tickle fights and building snow forts are long over.
So as I read the different articles I realized I had been suffering loneliness brought on by Empty Nest Syndrome. As it sunk in I also was able to accept it. That was a miracle since I usually don’t accept things that quickly. I started to feel better and my thinking began to change. I was being pretty selfish forgetting my wife is in this boat too. Then I said this is my life and it is what I make it. I took to heart the words about this could be a new time. I started to motivate and do things around the house. While I got moving I thought about how I started dating my wife when her daughter was just over 2 years old. We got married when her daughter was 5. Then I finally realized the big picture – my wife and I have never been a couple without a kid or kids around, YIKES! Then I calmed down and thought about how it can be our time now.
What do I like most about being a dad? I like how my kids freely hug me. That’s especially great for me since I have never received a hug from my father and although he is still with us I cannot believe I ever will.
So if there are any other Dads out there feeling like this it would be real helpful, for both of us, if you wrote in too.
Natalie Caine, M.A. natalie@lifeintransition.org
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