Cindy on April 10th, 2011
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” ~Franklin P. Jones
Conducting a home-based business with little ones underfoot is rarely easy, whether you’re designing jewelry or writing for the local paper. What happens when your child really needs you, but you’re trying to meet an impossible deadline? How do you stop worrying about your clients when you should be focusing on your family?
In this week’s “No Place Like Home” column on Royal Oak Patch, I share some of my early struggles to balance motherhood with freelance writing, plus some new and timely advice from parenting experts. Click here to read it.
Cindy on March 10th, 2010
A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.” ~Sloan Wilson
Note: This essay was published earlier this year (“A New Season of Parenting”) in Metro Parent magazine. It was written especially for friends whose children will be starting college this fall…
It’s going to be a roller coaster year for a friend whose youngest child will graduate from high school in May, then head out of state to college in August. My friend is already working through some conflicting emotions. She gets a little teary at the thought of one less place setting at the family dinner table, yet she’s thrilled about the prospect of a keeping neater house (and gaining a spare bedroom) in the fall.
My son’s last year in high school was a bittersweet time for me, too. Like Janus, the ancient Roman god of gateways, beginnings, and endings, I found myself looking forward and backward as my son closed the door on high school and prepared for his new life at college.
When I wasn’t caught up in the May-June whirlwind of award banquets and graduation ceremonies, I spent a lot of time wondering where his childhood had flown. When no one else was looking, I’d search for it in a family album crammed with precious photos of birthday parties, Fourth of July bike parades, Cub Scout camps, Christmas mornings, and Halloween nights.
Around that time, it also hit me that one of the sweetest gifts of midlife is the maternal amnesia that blurs the other memories of infancy and childhood — the post-partum blues; the exploding diapers; the marathon temper tantrums. Not to mention those snarky adolescent insults. When our kids prepare to leave home for college, after all, we tend to focus on the Hallmark moments.
All of this reminiscing seems a bit maudlin to me now. But revisiting the highlights of my son’s childhood helped soothe my empty-nest blues. Pausing to savor and reflect on my early years of motherhood made it easier for me to move on. It also made me grateful for the privilege of raising a child — and grateful for the chance to spend time with so many terrific young people.
During the high school years, for example, our home was a favorite gathering place for my son’s friends, so I always stocked up on extra snacks and soft drinks. Looking in our refrigerator in those days, you wouldn’t have guessed that we were a small family of three. When I unloaded my grocery cart in the checkout line, clerks would often ask if I was feeding a very large family or hosting a party. I always answered yes to both questions.
And since my “extended family” left for college when my son did, my feelings of loss encompassed more than one child.
Taking flight, moving on
Grieving isn’t unusual in the early weeks of empty nesting. Raising children gives us a sense of mooring and purpose. That sense of mooring suddenly disappears when they move out, and getting used to a quieter household can be a huge adjustment. As essayist Marion Winik wrote, “Once you’re a mother you can never think something else is the most important thing.” Still, few parents I know are comfortable with the term “empty nest.” An empty nest sounds pathetic and forlorn — adjectives that hardly fit the millions of accomplished women and men who are reinventing their lives after child-rearing.
“A word signifying a void or a vacuum is an unfair way to describe a time when life can be full of growth possibilities,” note Laura Kastner and Jennifer Wyatt in The Launching Years: Strategies for Parenting from Senior Year to College Life (Three Rivers Press). But even more important than finding a new catchphrase for the empty nest is shifting our focus to the fresh opportunities awaiting our kids on the other side of the threshold.
Our job, after all, is to help them learn how to leave us; to let go.
It’s also our job to get on with our own lives. Just as we hope our kids will thrive without our constant supervision, they need to believe we’ll be just fine, too. In the long run, helicopter parenting doesn’t do anyone any good.
So, even if your kids aren’t leaving home this year, it’s not too early to sign up for those ballet lessons you’ve postponed for ages. Or to rediscover the sport or the craft that kept you juiced up and inspired before your name was Mom. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. A new season of parenting will unfold. – Cindy La Ferle
– Nest photo by Cindy La Ferle –
Cindy on May 30th, 2009
“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” — Maya Angelou
Home. It’s my favorite word in the English language. As much as I love to travel, after a long trip there’s nothing that warms my heart more than the sight of the path leading to our front door. If I’m happy at home, everything feels right. There’s nothing I can’t do if the walls around me are sturdy, secure, and beautiful. And when I’m feeling adrift or lonely or empty, home is the only place that can fill the nameless ache in my soul.
Looking back on an eventful Memorial Day weekend vacation, I see that “home” was also the theme for my time away. At the start of our holiday, my husband and I drove to the west side of the state to continue working on the Frank Lloyd Wright home we purchased last year for our future retirement. We spent a couple of days cleaning up the gardens and transplanting perennials before heading out to Chicago to help our 23-year-old son move into the urban condo he bought recently.
It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when you watch your kid create the first real home of his own. It’s not quite the same as watching him move into that first crowded room in a college dorm. I suppose you could call it a crazy mix of pride, awe, disbelief, and excitement.
And yet … as deeply satisfying as it is to know that your child can function and thrive independently, it’s something else to realize that his definition of “home” now extends miles beyond the cozy, tree-lined neighborhood where you raised him. He’s choosing his own furniture and installing his own light fixtures. He’s got cookware in the oven drawer and beer glasses in his own kitchen cupboards. He’s planting fresh roots.
Taking after his folks, our son chose a condo with character in an historic building that boasts a variety of gorgeous (and quirky) architectural details — bay windows, mosaic floors, wrought-iron stair rails. (Fun fact: Child’s Play, a cult-classic horror film, was shot in this awesome building.) My husband and I were impressed with the choice our son made — and we left feeling confident that he’ll be very happy there. Still, we felt a faint little tug on our hearts as we waved good-bye and headed back toward the highway.
After arriving home in Royal Oak, we faced yet another midlife turning point. My mother-in-law decided that she was finally ready to look into a home for my father-in-law, whose dementia has clearly worsened in recent months. And so, my husband and his sister drove out to tour the new place with their mother, agreeing that this decision is the right one for both Mom and Dad — though it’s hardly an easy one. “Home” will soon change for my husband’s father in more ways than we can predict right now.
So there you have it. A retirement home in the making for my husband and me. A first home for our only son. A different place for my father-in-law. Our roots are pushing past old boundaries, reaching beyond familiar fences, reshaping home and family for us all. — Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on November 27th, 2008
I awoke this morning with devout Thanksgiving for my friends, old and new.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If the only prayer you said in your life was “thank you,” that would suffice.” — Meister Eckhart
My son flew home on Tuesday night. His new job in Chicago sends him all around the country, so I’m grateful that he’s able to take time off to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.
This is homecoming week in the purest sense. Our neighborhood’s recent college grads came back to visit this week (most of them found jobs outside Michigan) and I can’t wait to catch up with them. In spite of all the worrisome news on television — or maybe because of it — I’m counting my blessings. My two favorite words in the English language are home and family, and today I celebrate them with a full heart. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! — CL
Conducting a home-based business with little ones underfoot is rarely easy, whether you’re designing jewelry or writing for the local paper. What happens when your child really needs you, but you’re trying to meet an impossible deadline? How do you stop worrying about your clients when you should be focusing on your family?
