sweeping out the nest
the children have all grown up
who shall we be now
* * * * *
I woke up early this morning. There was an urge to phone my oldest granddaughter to wish her a happy 8th birthday before she left for school. The bed was still warm, and I could have gone back to it, but by the time the phone call had been made, the message left, the call returned and missed, and returned again... (tag, you're it! No- YOU'RE it!) and the conversation quickly had, I was hungry so I stayed up long enough to have breakfast and a cup of tea. Before the cup was empty, everyone was up, so I just stayed up and started the laundry.
"Everyone was up" now means we two.
Just He and Me.
We.
Back to the beginning of Us.
Before we were three. Or four. Or six.
Before the day was bookended with noise and laughter and tears and shouts and screaming. When doing the laundry took days instead of hours. When grocery shopping was both an escape and a chore. When I was the hub of the family unit, holding all the strings attached to all the people, watching them spin further and further away into autonomy. Letting go, one at a time, as they outgrew my reach.
I have an empty nest.
This is a joy! The hard work of maintaining friendship with my husband is paying off. It's not a hard or lonely thing to be just us. It's like a new spring in the relationship- in spite of a lingering winter and a teasing *actual* spring that almost comes, but keeps dancing just out of reach.
I must admit that I'm mostly writing today because I'm sleepy from being up way earlier than usual, and I don't feel quite like doing anything really productive. There are innumerable projects gathering dust on the spare bed in the sewing room, but motivation is taking it's cue from the blinding whiteness outside and is hibernating.
All this to say, it's probably time to blow the dust off my keyboard, shake the cobwebs out of my brain and start living into Spring.
Make that quilt. Write that book. Do some bead work. Wedge that clay.
Find that motivation.
Time to sweep out the nest.
