There I was, 40-something, standing in the middle of my new one bedroom apartment when it finally occurred to me...
For the first time in my life, I was about to live alone.
I felt my eyes brimming over with tears as I took a walk down memory lane and the last 25 years. I was overtaken with emotion.
No more kids to clean up after, no more vats of food to make, or fights to mediate, or tears to wipe or homework to check, (well that's not true - occasionally they still send their essays for feedback), but mostly...
NO MORE BATHROOM TO SHARE.
And you know what that means...
I could finally pee with the door OPEN.
Wahoo!!!
Silly as it sounds, anyone who hasn't tried this yet has no idea how liberating it is. Combined with an exercise that entails walking through your home completely naked serves up an effective recipe designed to remind one what life was like before restrictions. Frakkin' awesome.
Welcome to your potty training mental state.
Yesiree. The perks of living alone were starting to overshadow the awkward silence I was feeling in a space that was for once, COMPLETELY mine.
I had taken living with (and caring) for others so much for granted that I realized it was going to take some time for all of this 'freedom' to sink in.
But as always old habits die hard.
I was still buying food in bulk and making vats of it, just in case any of the boys or their girlfriends dropped by. (And there was always a chance, since everyone lived but a block away).
But that's not the point. I simply wasn't used to it.
It hadn't really dawned on me how foreign this concept of living alone was until I went to bed for the first time. I turned the TV off and there it was...
Silence
No more residual noises leftover from kids socializing until the wee hours of the morning, no more video games playing softly in another room, and no more wondering who will waltz in late from a night out on the town.
It was absolute, total, unequivocal silence.
How the hell am I suppose to sleep in this? I thought.
I know... like this - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
And just like that, I did.
However, life alone was not all daisies and daffodils.
As I settled into the new life changes I was experiencing, I realized that the trough-sized portions of food I was constantly cooking were less of an altruistic desire to feed my family and perhaps more honestly, a reflection of my own need to keep some semblance of my old life intact (and my other self).
After all, who was I if I wasn't needed?
I wanted to be needed. I wanted to matter.
Most of all, I wanted to count.
And if I didn't do something for someone, then what need would exist for them to come over?
It was such a large part of my modus operandi that I'm not sure I knew who I was without it.
So I cooked. But as the weeks and months passed, I stopped cooking for those other reaons (that I needed to be prepared just in case someone dropped by). I did it because it relaxed me, as it always had after a hectic day at work.
Cooking became its own reward. Especially soup.
So I became The Soupmaker.
Whether someone came by to enjoy the fruits of my loving labors became irrelevant to me. (Even though someone usually did). What was relevant was the feeling I got from doing it.
It always comes down to feelings.
If it feels good, you're doing it for the right reasons (whatever it is you're doing). And if it doesn't feel good, you stop.
It's as simple as that.
As the months wore on, something else occurred to me that shifted my life into new beginnings, changing my perspective once again...
I no longer had a nuclear family.
That realization became one of the turning points in my life. For this one however, I had to learn the art of really letting go.
While I am privileged to receive a phone call from at least one of the boys on a daily basis, for the most part, I was now on the outskirts of their lives.
And I'll never forget when it dawned on me either.
I had just gotten off the phone with one of them, and was told they had all made plans with each other (and girlfriends) over the holidays - dinner at one of their apartments, complete with wine and dessert. Always a big success.
Always?
"It's a tradition we started years ago Mom".
And I was not in the mix.
Oh my GOD, I thought, I'M EXTENDED FAMILY.
All the pieces were starting to fit together.
I realized I was also not the first responder in a crisis. Not that I didn't want to be, I just wasn't necessarily the first one they called when they had a problem - sometimes I was, but often they called each other first.
As it should be.
The shock wore off quickly enough. But as I hung up the phone, I remained standing, hands on my hips, looking at the ground expecting it to open up and an invisible home theatre to slowly emerge as the trailer of "My Life as a Mother" would start playing, melodramatic music n' all, to an audience of one - me.
And the same words rolled around in my head like a broken record...
I'm extended family now. Me. Holy crap. What does that mean?
It meant, it was time to let go.
A strange calm came over me then. I knew that whatever happened, they were going to be alright.
They had each other. And I smiled.
Not only did they have each other, but soon they would develop working relationships with people in their chosen fields and become intangibly connected with some of them as well. (Just as close as family).
I believe that every time you get to know yourself better, (ie; everytime you grow - academically, through a crisis, or creatively), you become better acquainted with who you are and begin to draw from within the circle of your experiences more people with whom you resonate energetically than ever before.
And those are the closest relationships you will ever have. As close as family. They include girlfriends, siblings, lifers, and co-workers.
I have some like that. Now it was their turn.
This was the curve in the road I had never anticipated.
It also became the perfect opportunity for me to do some of the discovering I had put on the backburner all those years ago when raising a family and staying alive had become the only two priorities in my life.
(Self-awareness held a distant fourth, after number three which was trying to pick God's brain in an effort to understand the nature of suffering).
But I smiled that day.
A quiet smile that no one, save me, was privy to. It was a smile that came with a knowing that I was once again presented with a golden opportunity to work on myself and learn some of the things I had always wanted to learn and do - like write a book, go on a trip with friends and learn how to be a Princess.
Maybe even, fall in love. With the right guy this time.
And so once again, the quest began...
