Empty Nest

Silence. These days all you hear through the house is silence. It’s what you prayed for and would have given a limb for all those years ago. When the cartoons were on maximum volume in one room, rap music blaring from another, you just wanted a few minutes of silence. But now that silence is all you have, you would do anything just to have a house full of noise again. You were always told to hold on to these times, that time flies and you will miss it one day. Now it all seems to make sense. The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes.   You think back to a time where there were fingerprints on the walls and toys everywhere being stepped on and you remember them as the “good ole days.” The days when the kids would beg to have friends over, you would cave and say yes and end up with 12 kids in the basement. As you rushed around to get something made for dinner to feed that many people and you whipped up some brownies you swore you would never do this again, until you did. Again and again. As you look at your frail body in the mirror, sunken in cheeks and white strands of hair is staring back at you. If only there was a way to know you’re living the “good ole days” before you’ve actually left them. Now the dinner and brownies are only made for two. Your days consist of reading books, doctor appointments, and running errands. It seems like it was yesterday when your errands were running the kids from gymnastics and baseball practice. Now the errands are picking out new paint colors for the empty rooms of the house. Your whole life was around your kids. Their school plays, sports practice and games, school dances, tutoring, back to school shopping, summer vacations, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. The kids are no longer kids anymore. But it seems you forgot that while they were growing up, you were growing old. Now it is your children’s turn to be parents and the cycle will continue on, there will be grandbabies and your children will look up to you and wonder how you did it all. You will beam with joy watching your children with their children, but knowing that no matter how old they are, they will always be your baby.