Bridging season

A dinnertime conversation revealed how Mom felt when she became an empty nester. I had no idea.

I think about this time in life as “bridging season.” My mom recalls how she felt when she was my age, and I recall how I felt when I was my daughter’s age. It’s a mind-blower, this mental time-travel, and it can happen abruptly.

Mom and I were eating dinner in an old-school Mexican restaurant, the kind where the menus arrive with a plastic basket of tortilla chips and a tiny crock of salsa. Our chatting wandered into the past, when I left for college and she faced an empty nest.

The conversation blew my perspective wide open.

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Mom: Thank God these chips aren’t too salty. Chips are usually so salty! Have you tried these chips? The salsa’s just okay but these chips! Here, try one.

Me: Thanks, Mom, I’m good.

Are you sure? (Crunch, crunch.) So how’s the writing going?

Oh, it’s okay. It’s getting easier. Two and a half years in and I’m finally figuring out how to write my newsletter.

What do you mean “figure it out?” I thought you said you wanted to write about the kids growing up?

I did. I do. But it’s tricky. I was never going to write about their private lives but I didn’t expect my life to be so hard to write about. Things keep changing and getting tangled and it’s hard to keep up. This empty nesting shit is complicated.

Oh my God, it took me years. When you left for college it was HORRIBLE.

What??!! Really?

It was awful when you moved out.

What? I had no IDEA you felt that way. I mean, I knew you missed me and all, but…

Oh God, yes. I cried all the time.

SERIOUSLY??!!

You were my only child! Here I spent 18 years with this delightful human being, and then you weren’t there anymore. I was grumpy, Dad was grumpy…

I seriously had no idea. You and Dad seemed so detached about it! But what did I know? I was totally involved in my own life.

Of course you were! And I wasn’t going to tell you. That’s part of what made it hard. I used to talk to you about those kinds of things. I couldn’t talk to your father about it. And there was no one else. And I didn’t have the Internet. We didn’t talk about things like that back then.

It’s not like it was the 50s or anything. It was the 80s! People didn’t talk about this stuff?

I don’t know, that’s just not how I was raised. When I grew up, the expectations for women were different. We had fewer choices, so we knew what our plans were: marriage, kids. There were fewer job choices, and I always just expected to be a housewife. Kids grow up. This was part of it.

Yeah, I get that. At first it was okay, but once they both left, it was different. Good, but different. Sometimes I think I could be handling this better. Like, obviously kids grow up, why do I have to keep talking about it? It takes a long time to adjust to this new kind of mothering. Plus the pandemic, and Dad dying, and everything else that’s happened. I’m only just starting to catch my breath.

It’s hard. It’s harder for your generation. You have to make all these choices and decisions I didn’t have to think about. I knew I’d be a housewife after you grew up. My job didn’t change all that much, except I missed having you at home.

I miss having the kids at home, too, but also not? I’m excited for Rael and me to look ahead as individuals and as a couple, not just as parents. But not not as parents, you know? We love being parents even more so now that they’re grown. It’s not like we want to “go back.” We couldn’t even if we wanted to. It’s hard to explain.

It wasn’t like that for Dad and me. It was just more of the same.

[I nod. What could I say?]

It’s weird that we can talk about the time in your life that I’m at now. We didn’t talk like this when the kids were little. It felt like a totally different life.

I barely remember those years myself. Oh, you were the cutest baby! God, I had no idea what to do with you. You were so small when we brought you home from the hospital! I had no idea what I was doing.

THAT I can identify with.

Honey, you’ll figure this out.

I guess so. I have so far.

Here’s our dinner. Holy mackerel! Look at the size of these plates! There’s enough food here to feed an army! I shouldn’t have eaten so many chips.

I’m lucky my Mom’s so willing to be open. But she’d rather laugh than follow me down my earnest rabbit-holes. “Why are you always so serious??” she sometimes asks me. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I need to do less probing and more reminiscing! I need to chill and ask better questions! Or parallels like this will stay hidden unless we just happen to stumble upon them.

Do you reminisce with your parents in a light-hearted way? Does “bridging season” resonate with you? Does recalling your life at your kid’s age make you feel younger or older? Or both?

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NOTES OF NOTE

• “There’s no way to predict what I’ll find in the shifting space between my kid’s expanding orbit and my mom’s shrinking world.” — from My adult kid, my mom, and me

• I’m sure this topic is on my mind because I read this heartrending post by

  Julie Klinger
  in her generous newsletter,
  Learn From My Mistakes
  . It’s hard to think about this stuff but I appreciate what she’s trying to do. So many of us are going through this side-by-side and yet we feel alone, and she’s trying to help with that.

• Don’t miss Kelly Corrigan’s four-part podcast series about planning ahead as your parents get older. It’s just a start, but it’s a warm and wise one.

  • Planning Ahead

  • Having “The Talk”

  • Essential Documents

  • Finances and Final Wishes

• More on my experience of my parents’ aging.

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Thanks for reading Parent of Adults. I’m Asha Dornfest, a Portland, Oregon-based author & parent of two young adults, and this newsletter is my invitation to compare notes on life beyond the empty nest.

➡️ Learn more about Parent of Adults or subscribe now for free.

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