Wait, did I say my nest was going to be empty?

How could I forget about the Pterodactyl who still resides there and shows no sign of leaving anytime soon?  Throughout my time as a parent I’ve generally received compliments about my children when they are not with me; I can’t necessarily say the same for my nesting partner.   Despite the 30 years I’ve been working on this project, I believe my grade is rather poor in this category.  I’m an enabler, a caretaker, a softy, and years of dependency have resulted in the creation of a domestically inept prehistoric monster.

For example, this morning I made him waffles, paid his parking ticket, and did a huge quantity of laundry so he could depart on his trip tomorrow.   If this doesn’t scream “MOM!” I don’t know what does.   Even my son pays his own parking tickets, does his own laundry and cooks for himself when he is home!   Blake’s own grandmother once told me he was the worst trained man she had ever met.  Oy vey, I’m in trouble.

A few years back I blogged about the symptoms of peri-menopause, and as I moved through this life passage, I seem to have escaped the hot flashes (picture me knocking on wood here, there is still time for these trials to occur), and most of the night sweats.   There are a few lingering issues that are vexing but not life altering:  my emotions run on the high side - I can cry at the drop of a hat, I seem to crave only things that are sweet or salty, and my skin still breaks out on occasion.  The one nagging symptom that I can’t seem to shake is the overwhelming feeling of impatience and contempt for my long-term roommate/spouse/colleague/oldest and largest child -- everything he does annoys me. 

Every. Single. Thing. 

The way he flosses his teeth and I can hear the little picking noises.  He paces around the entire house while he is on a conference call, making it impossible for the rest of us to go about our day. The endless adverbs he uses in his writing that I cross out as I edit his letters (I wholeheartedly concur with Stephen King that the road to hell is paved with adverbs).  The fact that he is always home when the UPS man comes and comments on the multitude of packages arriving.  The pile of crumpled “Week” magazines on the his bedside table next to the Q-tip he leaves in case his ear gets itchy in the middle of the night.   The two octaves his voice climbs after he’s had a few drinks.   He drags his feet when he walks in his slippers thus making an unmistakable CALUMP CALUMP noise on the wood floors that reverberates throughout the house (when this is combined with the conference call pacing I am forced to leave the nest).  Three pairs of his pants and a sweatshirt take up an entire load of laundry.  When he does empower himself to make his own breakfast, I inevitably find a shriveled, dried up English muffin in the toaster at 2 pm. The fact that he has read maybe 2 books in the last five years but has seen every episode of Real Housewives.  He returns almost everything that people buy for him, and often times things he buys for himself.  He is like goldilocks on steroids.  I could go on and on here, but it would take up a lot of space and listing my grievances is not productive (although somewhat satisfying).  I know that this is my problem, and up until now I have been able to keep these irritations at a sub-conscious level i.e. I noticed them but they didn’t get under my skin.  Lately, my skin is crawling and I can’t make it stop.  These habits have probably been around for a long time, but are magnified as we age.  No longer distracted by making school lunches and managing the schedules of my children, I am totally dedicated to the shortcomings of my spouse.  This is not a job that makes either of us happy.

When I read the Five Love Languages several years ago, I categorized myself as a #4 Acts of Service.  I recognized Blake as a combination of #2 Quality Time and #5 Physical Touch (I think it is pretty obvious that most men fall into this category).  I’m thinking that we need to add a 6^th Love Language for us empty nesters that involves extreme tolerance, meditation, and some sort of distractive stimulus when it comes to dealing with our partner’s imperfections.   Or maybe just good old fashion self-medication is the answer; tequila, edibles, or Valium would probably do the trick. 

The rate of divorce among adults 50 or older (this is called a gray divorce) is only about 10% (which is actually double what it was in the 90’s but still relatively low compared to other age groups).  This statistic suggests that people are finding a way to live with their spouse despite the ongoing aggravation.  Or they have resigned themselves to the old adage that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t? Perhaps murder rates are higher among spouses after the kids leave the nest?

Let’s review my options:  drugs, living with the devil, or committing a felony. The future looks bright indeed….

Leaving the Nest

I’m less than 5 months away from retirement.  You must think I am a real go-getter to be able to retire at 52 years old.  The truth is I only had to manage the life cycle of two products that started just over 21 years ago (22 if you include the gestational period).  I probably could have fabricated more products, but our business plan focused on just the two with the hopes that they would provide lifelong dividends.  If we had too many, we would be outnumbered and overwhelmed.  We didn’t spend a lot on R&D luckily, but we certainly paid more than our fair share to get the products ready for market and introduce them into the world.  We foresee these launch costs extending for another 4 years, but hopefully they will generate their own profits after that, and perhaps spin off into new ventures in the next 5-10.   While I will be retired from my full time job, I anticipate being pulled in as a consultant every now and again when the products come up against competition or enter foreign markets where they lack expertise. 

If I had read the job description before I embarked on this 20+ year commitment, I probably would not have applied.  But as it were, it is difficult to put into words the skills that are required to launch this specific type of product and the gargantuan amount of time, patience, wisdom and emotion that are involved.   I would like to say that in my annual review I received glowing remarks and was consistently promoted and given generous pay raises.  While my responsibility level only increased and the potential pitfalls verged on the truly dangerous (from putting up the stair gate to talking about drugs), my salary stayed the same ($0).  The less tangible “benefits” of my job actually lessened.  Early on, my kids used to smile lovingly at me from the crib and profess their love for me every day; later, during the bleak teenage years, I went through days where I barely heard a grunt while they gobbled down breakfast and headed off to school.   There has been no third party confirmation of my performance, and I’m not sure what rating my offspring would give me.  It doesn’t really matter I suppose, what’s done is done.  Nothing is perfect, but they are both headed to college, so that is one thing.  While the job has been challenging and all consuming at times, it has also brought me the greatest love and joy I have ever known in my life.  I would do it all over again.  And as long as one of them commits to putting me in a decent assisted living facility some day, I will be pleased and consider myself worthy of 5 stars.

I oscillate between being nostalgic for the past and looking forward to having my own time/life in the future.  My kids increasingly want to spend more time with their friends and much less time with me.   Intellectually, I can reckon with this turn of events because I did not want to spend much time with my parents when I was in my late teens/early 20’s either; but really, I’m so much cooler than my parents.   The lesson, I suppose, is that you are never as cool as you think you are.  

As I conduct my own private “exit interview” to assess the last 20 years of my life spent raising my children, images of our life pass before my eyes.  First, I think of all the things I wish we had done:  taken more camping trips, rented a beach house every summer, traveled more, played cards and “bored” games as my husband calls them, performed volunteer work overseas.  But I realize it is too late for that, their childhood has been formed and I can’t go back and change it.  So I reminisce about the unique things we did do as a family and the memories they will have:  summer trips to Lake Powell, driving to Pender Island in Canada, the many places they skied throughout the west every winter, the teams they played on, the hikes and bike rides we took in the mountains, and the incredible friendships we formed with other Park City families.

I moved to Park City 15 years ago this month when Shaye was 3 and Mac was 6.  We lived for a brief stint in a ski house in Deer Valley.  Mac could ski well enough on his own but Shaye had just barely gotten up on skis.  The next year when she turned four, we tried to teach her by ourselves, which as most of you know involves hours of screaming quads while they ski between your legs.  Consequently, we put her in the Deer Valley ski school for 2 days a week for a few weeks.  I remember picking her up on her last day with her sparkly unicorn helmet, and taking the chairlift up so we could ski down to where our house was located.   At the top I would remind her to pick up speed so we could get high enough up on the ski access hill so I wouldn’t have to walk as far with our equipment.  Prior to this day, it was an exercise in mood management and battling willpower to get us both back home.  But on that day, as a new ski school graduate, she gleefully skied behind me on her own past the log homes and totem poles that dotted the “Last Chance” run at Deer Valley, and we were both beaming with pride and accomplishment.  Today, 14 years later, and the last time I will ski with Shaye for a long while, we skied down the same trail.  As I skied down with a smile on my face mixed with tears in my eyes, I paused when we approached the proximity of our old house thinking she would also appreciate this nostalgic moment.  But she didn’t.  She sped past me using all of her years of ski race training; charging by the custom homes with moose sculptures and didn’t even glance at the old stopping place where we gathered our skis and she hopped on my back to finish the trek back to our house together.  She is impatient with homework to do, friends to see, and a future that is bright.  She doesn’t need my help climbing the hills or getting down them anymore. 

I did my job well and it is time to let her fly.   My nest will be empty, but my future is also lit with possibility, and of course the occasional consulting gig.