First day of school/Empty nesters

As I write this, it’s the first day of school for many kids. In some cases, it really is the first day, that is if you’ve got a kindergartener.

All morning my Facebook news feed has been filled with happy pictures of kids, the elementary school aged ones dressed in their “first day” clothes, proudly hoisting their backpacks. Every child’s proud, shining face filled with expectation is a poignant sight to me, as it seems only yesterday when my own son, now a man, first stepped on the school bus and drove away. I still remember ducking my head to hide my tears as he eagerly climbed aboard without so much as a look back, so eager was he to begin his new adventure. Little did I know or understand at the time it was the first of many big departures: his going away at ten for three weeks of sleep-a-way camp; his four years as an undergrad in Oregon; his six months of study in Oslo, Norway; his moving into his first solo-living apartment as an grad student in D.C. Each and every one of these leave takings has felt like a rip or a tear in the fabric of our family, and no matter how many departures there have been, I never, ever really get used to them.

In the past few weeks I haven’t been terribly surprised to see on Facebook a number of plaintive posts from saddened moms who had just packed their first (or last) child off to college. The first kid to leave the nest is, of course, the hardest; it’s even more tear-jerking when that child is your one and only. A few moms posting asked how bad would it be if they just happened to drop in on their college student, “just to say hello.” Pretty bad was the most common answer.

While other moms posted in commiseration about the difficulties of learning to grocery shop minus one, or how many nights they forgot and set a place for the missing child at the dinner table, I was thinking about my sort of step sister, Mary. A couple of weeks ago Mary’s son Will became a college freshman. She and her husband were driving Will to his college campus, 23 minutes away, a distance Mary knows by heart because she has timed it. This son is her first and only child to move out of the house to go away to college. Mary herself did not go, and her husband attended college part time while living at home with his parents. This is a proud moment for Mary, but strange territory, or so she claimed.

I disputed the fact she had no experience packing anyone off to college.

“Don’t you remember how I left?” I asked on the phone, trying to jog her memory. Mary and I are very close, although we have not seen each other for years. The last time we physically got together was nearly a decade ago when we spent an afternoon at the summer home of a sort of sibling we mutually share through our unique familial arrangement.

 “Eddie drove you and I rode shotgun,” Mary said. At the time I was 17, car-less, and desperate to get out of my mother’s house. Eddie was a friend of Mary’s half- brother, Chip, who had a license and a car and was willing to chauffeur. I told him to bring Mary along to help move my stuff, and also to keep him company on the long ride back to south Jersey. To our minds, we were strict south Jersey people and north Jersey was another planet, a planet constructed of concrete, and with twice as much traffic.

“Remember how I told you guys just to leave after we went somewhere for lunch?” I said. “You’re going to do the same thing with Will. You will not unpack his bags. You will not make his bed. You will hug him and kiss him goodbye and then you and Dave will scram. At home you will practice making small romantic dinners. You will hang out and watch TV. You will start to get used to being a pair and not a trio, because this isn’t just the start of your son’s life of independence, but your future with your husband as a child-free couple.”

“You don’t say,” Mary said. She was still adjusting to the concept of becoming an empty nester. I didn’t tell her it takes years for that notion to sink in, especially when the average college student who lives less than an hour from home drops in once a week to do his laundry.

Mr. Sax and I have officially been empty nesters now for about 7 years. Our son’s old room is making the slow transformation into a second den. Most of his personal belongings are gone and we no longer keep his favorite cereal in the house because he’s so rarely around to eat it. We baby our cats and dogs because they really have become our children. The only thing that never changes is the pang I still experience on the first day of school when I see the neighborhood kids proudly climbing on the school bus. I know just how their parents feel seeing them pull away. They feel sad because they know it’s just the beginning.