Changes

I've just read a post by one of my blogging friends North West London Girl in the Country about moving from the city, a life she knew, to a new lifestyle in the country. As she herself admitted her blog portrays an idyllic life, with beautiful children and a handsome husband. She's making great headways in joining the community life, but changing your life is never easy.

Yesterday we had the first viewing of our house in the country, an event which (hopefully) heralds the beginning, or even the end, of a change of life for me.

The signs that my life was going to change from the whirlwind that has been the daily routine of school runs, work, and family dinners (and everything in between) for the past twenty years or so, came when the first child left home for university four years ago. I cried my eyes out on the drive home from dropping Son off, a routine that was repeated every term for the first years. (By Year Three I'd got used to having to say goodbye to my baby).

I knew at the time that this mourning for the first child's departure was for me a premonition that everything would change, that the future would be different, that the children had now grown up, and that soon they'd not need me any more. During Son's university years, Daughter saved me. The amount of times I blessed their three and a half year age difference, which by no means was planned. It meant that I still had a girl at school, and had time to adjust to a childless house. I don't think I could have coped with having two children leave me one after another any sooner.

This all sounds so dramatic, I know. And I'm aware that all mothers go through this and that many factors could make the situation much worse. Also, I've been far from a perfect or traditional mother. I worked full-time most of the years the children were growing up. Still, it doesn't make these changes in one's life easier to deal with.

And now the final piece of the jigsaw is slotting into place with the sale of this house (Again I must cross my fingers here, in this market one mustn't assume anything). Don't get me wrong,  I am now absolutely dying to get out of here. I will not be sad if I don't ever set eyes on another cow in my life. (And I say this at the time when the fields in these parts are full of sweet young calves suckling on their mothers.) Yet, when driving home from London yesterday, I spotted a marquee in a garden just outside a pretty, Thomas Hardyesque town, and suddenly realised that I'd always planned to have Daughter's wedding in the grounds of our house.  Or even Son's. They would be horrified that I've been planning such a thing, but, I am a mother after all.

I told myself not to be so silly. It's all about being able to let go. A cliché I know, but so very true.

So Dear North West London Girl, even if we don't know the details of your troubles, be assured moving away from the country is as tricky as moving to the country. Especially when you've no idea where you're going yet. I know, I know, I do go on about this....

That awful expression

I'm told what I'm going through is called 'Empty Nesting'. But I'm not a bird. I do not nest, I have no feathers of my own (only expensively acquired ones on some of my garments), have no wings (that I admit to) and I've not got a long beak (nose is a different matter).

Still, my last baby bird has gone.

OK, that sounds too dramatic. She’s eighteen and has not left home for good, nor has she travelled to Timbuktu, nor gone to war in Afghanistan, nor is travelling around the world on a shoestring. No, she’s working with a family I've met in Finland. She has her Grandmother fairly close, her Godmother in the same city, and several of my good old (sorry, girls, don't mean in age) friends who she can contact any time of day or night. So it’s not that I’m desperately worried about her. Apart from the normal of course.

I never thought of myself as one of those mothers who’d mourn the departure of their children. When they were smaller, I used fantasise about coming to an empty house, and if on a rare occasion it happened I’d turn the radio and TV off and sit quietly enjoying the silence. I was keen for them to grow up, to be lovely adults (which they are) and to lead lovely, happy lives.
So I guess I just miss them. It’s an emotion hard to explain. I’m not a control freak. If you saw my house you’d know how true that is. When everyone’s home, I let the kids do what they like, even if it means that I curse under my breath when I’m faced with a messy kitchen first thing in the morning. So it’s not as if I want to have them under my wing all the time. No, I just really like their company, and the company of their friends.Yet it’s not even that simple. If they were just friends, I wouldn't suddenly have a lump in my throat driving alone in the car, or feel desolate when finding the house empty and eerily quiet at the end of a day. Or feel close to tears at the supermarket when realising how much less food just two people eat. Wondering if it’s even worth cooking anything?

I know I need to move on and move on I'm indeed doing. Goodness knows there aren't enough hours in a day to do what I have ambitions for, in addition to those everyday annoyances like sorting and paying bills, and (God forbid) paid (with actual money) work, let alone mourn the departure of perfectly well adjusted, clever, ambitious, healthy grown up children. Or are there?