adult children

September Nostalgia – No Judgement

It happens so quickly. The day is hot, you’re in your lightest t-shirt, sweating with an icy refreshment, smelling like sunscreen and summertime. The evening brings a big breeze – the winds of change – the temperature drops, leaves turn golden overnight and suddenly it’s a sweater day. A friend said to me once that the new year should start in September – as that is the time of new beginnings, holidays end, work life accelerates, kids start playschool and grade school or even leave home for fresh adventures.  It’s been a decade since our family was knocked off its feet as one by one, yet all so quickly, our four kids were launched from home.

Before that there was a familiar rhythm to getting back to packing lunches and supervising homework and meeting new teachers.  And then suddenly the tune changed – we were helping our kids (young adults really) pack suitcases, buy dorm or apartment supplies – Ikea dishes and clothes hampers, maybe a tea kettle. Possibly you know that drill – or perhaps instead you’ve got a traveler on your hands, causing you some trepidation as they shop for backpacks and the perfect tiny tent. The world’s opened up again and they’re going to navigate the furthers corners of it. It should be exciting, right? So, what’s with this quaking you feel? And sleepless nights rivalling when you had wee babies in the house?  

     That was me – times four. Those autumns of our kids flying the coop were full of chaos and apprehension.  How would our comfortably close family readjust? As we were just adapting to our oldest daughter leaving for university and not coming through the gate at the end of a school day, pausing sometimes to lie on the lawn and gaze at the clouds, the others started to flee, also -one to be a liftie on a far-away ski hill, another for university on an island, the last to travel Europe solo. 

Those times are behind us. Now I’m calling my young granddaughters up to ask what they’ve decided to wear for the first day back to grade school and hearing mostly about their eagerness to hang with friends again. The next morning their mom, my daughter Zoë, tells me that in all their excitement and rush after those lazier summer mornings, she forgot to tell the oldest where she would meet her when her new school gets out. Oh no, I say, but then we’re both consoled in an odd way that for the first time this granddaughter is taking a cell phone to school and so finding her when the bell goes won’t really be a problem in 2022. (As the kids say, “No judgement.” She’s twelve and getting about on her own.)

I tell Zoë that September brings me back to the panic of those under rehearsed autumn mornings when she and her three siblings were young, and then I think about the days when in quick succession they left home. It was Zoë first, packing up her paints and fantasy novels, then Cole with his snowboard and video camera, two years later Hudson with his dry wit and philosophy books, and finally Lily kissed us and flew to Europe – though somewhere before all that she kissed us and ran away. 

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   From our too quiet house I wrote a book about the change from bubbling wrapping to letting go, titled, Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest. It wasn’t easy for this mom of four to adjust to late night anxious calls, to hear from a daughter looking for a place to cry out loud, the way she liked to cry, to adjust to the unease, angst and face it – sometimes new peace – over grilled cheese for dinner, because who cooks for two? The media and an older generation would have us believe that we have overindulged, overprotected and generally, now that parent is a verb, over-parented our kids. I was able to stay connected and endure their flights from home with the aid of satellite communications, during this anxious time of back and forth texting, calling, consoling, and applauding as everyone in our family got their bearings again. If you’re up for a bit of a wild ride – check it out – Text Me, Love Mom offers an opportunity to contemplate and laugh over the perpetual trial and error of another stage of parenting. Or stay in touch with my blog where I’m musing about other topics now – check out the list in the sidebar. And I still feel nostalgic in September….

What Vera Believed In – (and Love-Pancakes)

“Days may not be fair – Always

That’s when I’ll be there – Always”

Years back when my four kids were small, they liked to make me breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day – pancakes fashioned to look like the word L-O-V-E, served with toast and pb and j because they could make that too, alongside cold scrambled eggs and tea – as they hadn’t mastered timing. Their dad, amused by their muddled efforts, stayed hands off and kept a secret for me, which was that on a day when I could supposedly choose my activities the garden had called to me. So while our two girls and two boys were arguing about who would carry the tray to their sleepy mom I was actually outside listening to birds sing with my hands in the soil, weeding around pansies and tulips, freshening up raspberry canes. 

My husband would distract the kids, I’d sneak back inside, go from dusty garden attire back to pj’s, climb into bed and wait for all their happy faces and my curvy pancakes. When they got bored watching me eat, I’d be able to stop forcing down cold eggs and toast with gobs of peanut butter, and maybe get back to the robins chirping and dividing a bag of glad bulbs up for me and my own mom. 

From there, having had my blissful gardening fix, I’d have gone in to make a (hot) brunch for my parents or maybe a fancy dinner later with my mom’s favorite rice pudding for dessert – the notion of Mother’s Day off a silly sort of fantasy with four feisty kids, my mom to spoil and sometimes my mom-in-law too. 

     With those four kids grown and my sons living away, one of my thoughtful daughters, (the oldest a mom herself), will always make me a Mom’s Day brunch or lunch – I wouldn’t mind if it still was wiggly pancakes spelling out L-O-V-E. I wish like mad that I could make love pancakes for my own dear mom, but she’s left us now. I have more time to garden these days, but I make a point of doing it on Mother’s Day because it is amongst the fresh rose branches and the new shoots of phlox and the pointy arrows of peonies starting to reach for the light, that I feel closest to my mom. 

When we needed a family-sized home my husband and I bought my parent’s place and they downsized. While we’ve renovated the house, and even changed the landscaping, the foliage – giant evergreens, bushy lilacs, resilient bleeding hearts, frothy nan king cherry, and my favourite hollyhocks – were started by my mom’s creative green thumb. I feel I’m tending her garden, googling guidance to make her special rose bush blossom (the one used for rose petal jelly) and to correctly prune the spreading lilacs. This will only be the second Mother’s Day without my mom at our table, telling me it’s too soon to put geraniums out, to just be patient. She’d be okay with me popping my sweet pea seeds into the ground though. 

    It’s been a good week for horticulture – windy maybe, but not too hot or cold. I’ve sat on the grass pulling out the darn creeping bell flower and thought lots about my little mom – (she was much shorter than I am) – she was quiet but wise, not prone to sharing her worries. She nurtured her soul tending to her garden, but nurtured ours with her love-labour of making jam and jelly for our winter toast, by baking for us all year – apple and berry pies, spicy ginger snaps, and snicker doodles, lemon loaves and her magical chocolate cake. While I sat on the lawn beside that favorite rose, which will blossom with fluffy layers of pastel pink flowers, I thought I’d text my four kids my own Mother’s Day message about their grandma. She left us two years ago next month and I’d like to share the goodness of what she believed in. I want to remind them that their Grandma believed: 

That flowers are necessary for the soul.

And tending to even a tiny garden will lift the spirit.

In offering food and drink to anyone that passes through your door. 

In dropping off treats to people having troubles. 

That making your bed first would start your day right.

She believed in offering a helping hand. 

And in making old-fashioned phone calls to reconnect. 

To never visit a friend empty handed. 

She believed in making Sunday dinner special.

It’s Canada. Always bring a sweater, she said.

She believed in the magic of a good chocolate cake.

She believed in going barefoot.

She believed in treating her adult kids to weekends away by babysitting for us. 

She especially believed in celebrating family birthdays, all the holidays, and New Year’s Day dinner. 

She believed in being good. She was good. She would have especially believed in L-O-V-E pancakes. 💕

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Your Hand In Mine

July 19 2020

Rules. Rules. Rules. We recently needed to move our dad to a senior’s facility with a higher level of care for him. With Covid there are rules, so many rules. Even coming from one residence with no covid to another without the virus, and having had several tests himself – he still had to be isolated in his room for fourteen days. I had to believe that when that non-isolation isolation (we were thankfully still allowed to visit) would be over Dad truly would be in a good place. He’s now on a memory care ward but please please don’t jump to conclusions! Don’t sigh and say dismissively, “Oh, okay, that’s that then.” My dad has dementia – but I know this about the ‘D word’ – you can’t decide what that means for him in particular, or compare it to someone else you know. Yesterday I listened to a poignant podcast about an elderly woman with dementia, and how she told a daughter she didn’t initially recognize, “This is who I am now. Accept this version of myself. Know I love you still.”

In the years since my dad’s had dementia I’ve made irratic frustrated attempts to learn more about the disease, and what I’ve learned most from that is that the way a person’s mind leads them down the path of dementia is unique for every soul. My family has had to learn what sometimes frightening path my dad’s mind has taken him along, as well as all the ways he is wonderfully still the same.

The kind doctor that first diagnosed him told him, Dementia doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It just means your memory isn’t working the way it did before.

My dad is still my dad. He is still honest and good, (though sometimes cranky), with charming wry humour. ‘How long have you been on oxygen?’ – a doctor recently asked. “Same as you,” he said, “since I was born.” And when I try to cool off his hot apartment, instead of telling me he is cold, he asks me if I can find him an ice pick. A nurse brings him his medication and he offers to split it with her.

That humour is evidence of a sharp funny mind. But the same mind doesn’t see the boundaries of his own changed body. Why can’t he get his drivers license back?, he wonders despite being on oxygen, and off-balance even with a walker. It’s on his bucket list to ride a horse again, he tells me and he’d like to get a two bedroom house with a stove to have people over and cook say, a few eggs.

People warn us how sad it will be when he doesn’t recognize us. I can’t predict, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. He knows exactly who his five children are, not always where we live now, but who we are is locked in. He doesn’t know he’s called one of us a dozen times in half an hour. Or that he asked us what time we’ll arrive two minutes ago, or he already called to say Happy Birthday to the brother whose birthday he amazingly remembers. Still if we can get the conversation past why he can’t move into his own place, and honestly sometimes we can’t, we can still engage in conversations about the times that as he says, were a life time ago.

My parents marriage was the union of two people who believed not just til death do us part, but in loving each other completely until then. Their strengths shone through their union but for the last four years our mom had to assume care for the husband who had previously done the heavy lifting for her. Fourteen months ago mom confided to me, “Dads worried about what will happen to him if something happens to me.” I tried to be funny, ‘We are too Mom, so you better stick around.” A month latter, the day after their 66th wedding anniversary, to our childish surprise – she unexpectedly died.

He managed in the assisted living facility we’d helped them choose for a year without her – his guiding light. He’s frail, and weak of body, but not of mind in the way too many think. Yes, he has dementia but he can tell a good story, and set you to laughing with his wit.

Funny what memories we hold onto. Being the middle of five kids it would have been rare to have my dad’s attention all to myself. But I remember going to a department store once – just him and I. I have a vivid memory of how before entering the big store he took my small hand in his big strong one. I honestly remember being so happy to have my dad, holding my hand, just the two of us out together.

What I wish I’d told my mom that day fourteen months ago when she, I realized, was the one worried about him managing without her, was this, “It would be ok Mom. We’ll take care of him.” What I didn’t know as a kid was that my turn to take his hand and make him feel safe would come. It’s not easy to do that always, but listen hard Dad – we’re trying.

Staying Separate and Apart – Together

To write this story or not – but I’m a writer and it’s what I have to offer. I’m isolated with part of my big family…

Since I was a kid in grade four I’ve found joy and solace by putting words to paper (screen). As we all hunker down in our homes I feel the need to write. I want to share the family humour, the lightness of humanity and the very tough bits too.

To catch you up – here’s a brief tale of our situation at our ‘camp’ away from the world, though at the same time as we’re away we are deeply engrossed in events unfolding everywhere. I was out of the country with my adult daughters for a special short trip. We knew to be cautious in our travels – handiwipes in our purses, hand washing everywhere, hanging together. Even on our return we weren’t worried. Social distancing wasn’t a thing that first day. It was more than 24 hours after that when our world started to be dumped upside down with the disturbing frightful realization of how Coronavirus had insidiously crept into our province.

It was recommended that my husband work away from home because of my having come from away. We decided he would head to our cottage and prepare it in case any of our adult kids wanted to isolate. (It was the beginning of the odd toilet paper hoarding – though honestly folks we legitimately needed some). He packed the truck up with supplies as if it was a family retreat over a summery long weekend but this time he had cleaning products instead of blow up beach toys and canned goods, not marshmallows.

Our youngest daughter was studying for an important graduate entrance exam and followed him. Her big sister is the mom of our two young granddaughters and her husband was out of the country not aware yet that he’d have to head home. So there I was with my husband telling me to follow him to the cottage on the lake to finish this isolation time, but I felt like a big mother hen and needed to take care of my eldest daughter and my granddaughters, at least until her husband was homeward bound. So we were hanging together at bit over meals, the girls doing art at my kitchen table, their mom and I trying to sort out what everyone everywhere was sorting.

It was March 12th and snowing, not that usual spring snow which is heavy and wet and perfect for snowmen, but instead light flakes blowing and drifting through the night and day. Normally another flipping snow storm would be enough to fill social media with chatter but I remember the weather wasn’t mentioned as we all caught up with the threat of the virus and were deep in social media attention mode.

Waiting for my son-in-laws return and the snow to stop making the roads treacherous – I started to pack. But hold on – what was I packing for? … the now recommended fourteen days after travel to be over? Or some long otherworldly escape for how long …? Would I want outfits to maybe go out locally in the early spring sunshine in another week? Or comfy clothes to be sick with some version of the virus? Was I taking a stack of books to read near the calm lake til it was all clear – or bleach, disposable gloves and lotion for hands we’d be scrubbing for who-knows- how long?

We have four ‘kids’ – two sons in another city, sharing a home with one of their girlfriends. More mother hen – I had to know what they were doing as the numbers of people being tested for the damn virus was slowly growing. I was worried about our boys and the girlfriend – all in the entertainment business whose jobs had closed up – but the boys were more concerned for us in this world of the Coronavirus where at our age we were annoyed at being counted among the older folks and in that broad demographic that was most at risk of serious trouble. The mind spins . Damn it I’m not near ‘elderly’. The guys worried that if they’d unknowingly been exposed they could pose a risk to us. I wanted them to leave the threat of the big city and be exactly where we were. We talked a lot. None of us had any knowledge that we’d been directly exposed. Had we in our travels? Had they in contact with a wide swath of folks at work? We changed our minds and changed them again and decided to come together and practise being apart together – however that would look.

Normally in my life I’m pulled tight into my own city by my dad whose in a senior’s residence and wants our company desperately. But I couldn’t visit him. I was ‘free’ to go. (That’s a whole other story to be gently told).

My mom passed last year – oh Mommy, you never ever could have imagined all this. The whole world is so far off kilter, nervous and stunned, watching numbers go up, and now our government is calling Canadians home. When does that happen?

I drove down the highway alone, trying not to stop – so aware that I was isolating from others but feeling the separation of people from me. There were some cars but mostly it was the truckers and me . It took me so long to pack extra who- knows- what for a trip of indeterminate length and purpose that I was amused at my own indecision. Tucked in with a box of chocolates I couldn’t resist in the car were weights for exercising, and my sewing machine ??? I had high boots for deep snow and sandals for hot weather. Should I bring the hair dye from the back of the cupboard though it’s not my current fav colour’? Those young women can go falsely grey but I’m still fighting the good fight.

I passed the biggest herd of elk I’d ever seen standing in a tight group beside the road in the moonlight. No social isolating for them. When I arrived at our cottage my husband was asleep and my daughter headed to bed. It was calm. The lake was still. A slip of moon shone over it. But beyond the mountains I’d driven over, the world was changing, changing, changing.



Reaching for the Silver Bells

It’s the holly jolly season of brightness and light. But my family and my extended family have lost too many of our elderly this year – the chiefs of our tribes, my dear mom one of them. Mom loved Christmas – and like so many moms she created it – vintage Christmas cards hanging on a string, the favorite decorations glistening on a fresh cut tree, the gifts shopped for at sales throughout the year, and closer to the day – the table top lined with shortbread and nanaimo bars and those Chinese noodle chocolate cookies chilling on the porch. So all of it is hard this year, but Mom would want us to find the joy, to gather together and hold each other tight on a snowy night. (Mom – we’ll give it our best shot.) In her honour I’d like to share a favourite excerpt from my book Text Me, Love Mom that speaks of the joy, chaos and excitement of a family in transition at Christmas time:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – The Queen, Alice in Wonderland

For part of a bright, but snowy December and into early January, our home was crowded with our kids and their friends home from university and jobs – along with snowboards and old skates in the porch, left-behind scarves draped over chair backs, and take-out Chinese containers leaning against eggnog cartons in the fridge. Once our two sons and their dad had completed their December twenty-third and twenty-fourth shopping mall blitz, adding to their two sisters more timely forays at artisan shops or framing their own works, the gifts had spilled out under the fresh scotch pine Christmas tree. The deluge of snow lent to the holiday other-worldly atmosphere.  Every outing required boots, or at least high tops, sought out from the heap at the door.  We’d all developed the technique of backing down the sloping road instead of plowing forward through icy drifts, and the sidewalk shovel-ers worked with the risk of a friendly-fire snowball being tossed at them from the front deck.  There was always someone trying to find a sibling, or the truck keys, or else they were noisily trying to locate the contact lens solution over another person calling out to see if there was milk in the downstairs’ fridge. 

For most of their long break we skipped family breakfast – as pre-Christmas I was out using the mornings to finish gift shopping, and post-Christmas I used the early hours to bring in provisions for the household.  I’d almost forgotten how so much of my life had revolved around trips to various grocery stores for two decades. A few days before our kid’s departures were going to begin – I located them in the evening, in person or by text, “Breakfast together tomorrow at 10:30, okay?”

Zoë, our eldest, was more interested in the stacks of pancakes then previously.  It had been a marvelous new holiday season for our family – because it was growing again.  A few months ago, just before receiving her Masters degree twenty-five-year-old Zoë and her dedicated boyfriend of the last five years learned that the IUD Zoë used for birth control had failed them.  “Got one past the goalie,” they were able to jest once we all passed the initial stress and concern of the IUD being surgically removed without interfering with the tiny new being.  Zoë’s guy would touch her rounding belly and we would all grin like Cheshire cats.  He was finishing a degree in architecture and was madly planning a renovation of their Vancouver home to accommodate a new baby.  It was the twenty-first century – we were all okay with them transitioning to being parents before we helped plan the fun and romantic ocean-side wedding of Zoës dreams.

While brushing the snow off the car before driving our sons to the airport, a blur of white skidded past the hedge and across the road. It was a snowy white rabbit, running parallel to me. This was an unusual lucky omen – a white rabbit running parallel to you, but only if it was Sunday. And Sunday it was.

Our youngest, Lily, flew back to Montreal for the start of classes a few days later. She called me her second day ‘home’.  “It’s so cold, Mom.  I can’t even hang onto my phone – it’s so cold.”  She was rushing to a grocery store to buy ingredients for my meat sauce.    “Tell me exactly what you put in yours.  I want mine to taste like yours.” She was quiet. Then, “What are you and Zoё doing?  I wish I was still there hanging out.”

      Zoё had been commissioned to paint a mural for an art show, but was free to hang back in Calgary for another day and return when the price of flights weren’t as inflated, promising me some mom and daughter time together.  We were returning a maternity shirt that didn’t fit her, going out for a peaceful lunch and because, unlike the Montreal deep freeze, Calgary was being treated to balmy Chinook weather, we planned to take a walk along the reservoir.  After all the lovely chaos of Christmas, a day of activities devoted to Zoё and I, seemed like bliss, but I was aware of the new hush Lily had returned to in her small Montreal studio.

“We’re not doing much, Lily.  It’s quiet here.  Make your sauce, and call if you need help.”

But Lily hadn’t been ready to disconnect. “Hey Mom.  How will we work it when Zoё has the baby in June?  We’ll be there right?  How will we make sure that we’re in Vancouver?”

            Funny, her brother, Cole, had asked me something similar.  He had no interest in being around the delivery room but he wanted to be close by, “to film the kid as soon as it arrives.” 

“We’ll work it out,” I told Zoё’s little sister, “It will be summertime.  That’ll make it easier.”

              The following day I took my eldest daughter to the airport, gave her blossoming body a firm hug, and handed her over to those security personal before driving back to this too quiet, too calm house.  But imagining our first little grandchild, I feel less lonely.  The baby’s other grandparents live in Calgary as well – and the bright bigger bedroom that was Zoë’s before a recent renovation, now has enough space for a queen bed and a tiny crib when they visit. Suddenly, the renovated house was beginning to make sense again…  Despite the miles that separate us, our family was growing and this house, halfway up the hill, is still home. 

Sweet, my kids would say.  And so I’ll type to them all in their far away places, “Text me. Love mom.”

If you’ve enjoyed this excerpt, and would like to read more or know someone who will be captivated by this tale of a family sorting out this new stage of life Text Me, Love Mom is available from Amazon at https://www.amazon.ca/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712

It’ll Be Okay, Mom – Fingers Crossed

It’s a different sort of summer. For months (years) we’ve been encouraging (harassing) my parents to change their living situation. I sugar coat all the words to make the struggle easier. And I can’t stop myself from thinking about myself and my husband, and our same age peers – what living situation will we choose in our ‘golden years’?

Without doubt we will all want to stay in the houses that we’ve renovated and refitted with carefully chosen granite and then more fashionable quartz , where we’ve taken down walls making great rooms as great rooms became the fashion. But when the time comes, as it has for my mom and dad, when that big yard, the staircases, even the meal preparation and bringing in food, has just become too much – where will we land?

It’s taken a while for my four siblings and I to all be on the same page agreeing that, as proud as we may be that these people that raised us have managed to keep their own household going for all these years, (65 years in fact) but now it’s time for them to have an easier life. My dad has various health issues now and simply put – they need a supported living situation.

I could write a book on the journey involved in searching out the right – what I call – ‘retirement residence’. I call it that because it sounds nice and (fingers crossed) hopefully it will be. My parents will have their own apartment- we are not talking about a nursing home or the dreaded ‘long-term care facility’ that one might need some day. They’ll have a bedroom, living room ‘kitchen area’ and the oversized bathroom these places feature.

It was that tiny kitchen that we all wished was something more. They’ll have room to bring the dining room table we’ve told our stories around, but there are just a very few cupboards. Where to put the platter that’s held the turkey for decades of Christmas’s , or the collection of vases from years of bouquets, what about the big bowl for popcorn with a movie on tv, or the big lemonade pitcher for drinks when family arrive with thirsty little ones?

Because of that tiny kitchen ‘spot’ we took my mom and dad to view a higher end retirement residence this week. No question that it was attractive and, despite it not being necessary – with three meals provided in the first floor dining room- it featured an actual kitchen, complete with full fridge and dishwasher. This brand new building, with residents moving in for the very first time was lovely, but when we returned to the place more comfortably within their budget we saw folks already friendly with each other chatting on a Sunday afternoon outside, and in the dining room an elderly woman was playing the piano loudly and with spirit, for whoever cared to listen.

We went up to take measurements to see if perhaps the china cabinet might fit, to hold special treasures and more practical items (it will) and I stared down the mini fridge.

I know my parents will only need to keep a quart of milk, or a few refreshments for when they don’t want to walk down the hall to the ‘bistro room’ that is always open, but it is the idea, that after a lifetime of taking care of themselves they don’t need their own butter or mayonnaise or a dozen eggs, that is bothering me.

That will be okay, mom, I think. We’ll go out to shop for what makes you happy in that puny fridge. In the next few weeks we’ll get busy choosing how to make this home. We’re putting our trust in the good we see here – the supportive kind staff we’ve met, the opportunities to socialize with your peers around new tables, and that wonderful woman playing the piano.

……To read about another sort of leaving home click here for My book Text Me, Love Mom on Amazon

Being An ‘Adult’ Kid

65964B6E-5AF3-42FC-AD33-9FFECA4E560F.jpegI want to lean into this stretch of time I have here at the lake. Not to think of the days counting down – but instead of the days adding up. Today was as full as a day at any lake day could be.

I had company, my niece and a girlfriend were sleeping when I wound my way down to the beach and slid the kayak into the lake before climbing in. It was the years first kayak ride with the lake still and even, just ripples in the hot sun. I paddled out to watch neighbors following kids out for an early swim or setting out on deck chairs with coffee. 

   Afterwards I  came home to see my niece and her freind off –  hugging and taking last photos into the bright sun. 

Invigorated by the kayaking I  decided to bike but it was already so hot that I turned back at the first hill, and spent my energy instead with a swim. After towelling off and deadheading the geraniums  I read my book with the guilty pleasure of chips and dip, stopping to text with a friend and my sister. img_4375

The deck rocked with the rolling water from all the ski boats enthusiasts yelping as they rode the waves. It was noisy and a bit wild, but I liked that seeing as there is such a short time for us Canadians to be raukus sun-worshippers before winter will drive us inside again. 

  I called my brother and continued the family talk about helping our parents through a move from their home to a seniors residence- such tricky times to be an adult ‘kid’.  I thought about how, if my own four children need to keep their dad and I ‘safe’ someday this will be the first place they try to discourage us from coming to – worried about ‘an elderly version of us’ on the dock, or climbing the rocky slope from the lake, or even making our tired way to our upstairs bedroom. I tried not to think too hard about that while I brought the day to a close watering plants and picking deep purple basil to eat with a plate of tomatoes and soft cheese.  I couldn’t help my mind going there though on this summer’s day, with its mix of summertime action and tranquility. img_4373

(looking for more by Candace Allan – see . Text Me, Love Mom – a summer read. )

September Takes My Breath Away

The leaves start to drop. The air is fresh. A school playground fills with shouting kids, and pick-up soccer games – and I feel melancholy, but on the edge of excitement, too. More than January, isn’t September the time of new beginnings? New grade school? College and university? Parents and kids fill backpacks with crisp notebooks and coloured pencils, then head to the malls looking for squeaky new runners? There are anticipatory trips to Ikea to deck out tiny dorm rooms or studio apartments full of furniture with funny Swedish names.
But there’s boo hooing all across the country too, for all those kids heading out the door with hockey duffles converted to super suitcases, and back packs hiding that favourite worn out stuffie, or that last  pair of sandals hopeful for another month of warm weather?

I have four young adult children who are just now getting used to my having written a book about this next stage of parenting, about all those Septembers – those goodbyes until Thanksgiving.  When Zoë, the eldest, left home, her copies of Love In the Time of Cholera, Harry Potter, and Dragonquest gone from the shelves, her colorful collection of shoes gathered from the closets, and her vanilla-scented products stripped from the bathroom, I searched the self-help sections for a manual on how to let go. Now that I’m a true empty nest-er, it seems a bit odd. After all, I still had three hyped-up teens in the house. One of them leaving home should have given me a little more room to breathe. But it didn’t. It took my breath away. photo

I was able to relive it all, writing Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two boys, One Empty Nest.  (Hey kids – I gave you pseudonyms – relax.  Nobody knows who this Zoë, Cole, Hudson and Lily that I write about are.) If you’ve been following my erratic blog, I’d love it if you check out my book.  It’s been one hec of a ride. And if one of yours has packed up and will be spending winter and spring in another part of the country, or maybe another country – it’ll be okay.  Really.

 

Our Dreamy Souls – Travels With My Young Adult Daughter

Staring out my office window a week ago, the last sweet peas still arched towards the sun, a late yellow rose had put out a new bloom, but now that is behind us for months to come.  The snow has arrived.

I tend to do more fall cleaning then spring cleaning – getting ready for time spent inside during the cold, and so came across a little journal I kept while my youngest daughter and I travelled together for a few weeks.  As much as parents like me, who managed busy households, dreaded all the kids moving out, this little journal reminds me of some of the best times with those young adult children.

My daughter Lily, was just eighteen and almost a year out of highschool.  It was her ‘gap year’. Lily had travelled solo back to Italy where she had done a language immersion program in high school. Her dad was nervous about her traveling on her own, so when she suggested maybe Mom could meet her over there for ten days or so, it was an easy sell. We both thought we should meet in Paris and then travel to the South of France.  Just the phrase, ‘the south of France’ stirred our dreamy souls. After a few exotic lazy days on the beaches near Antibes we took a train to see Milan, after which I was to return home and she was resuming her trip by meeting friends in Barcelona.

This was the journal entry I came across on the chilly November day, written on a warmer day several years ago in May –

“We’d arranged a taxi to pick Lily up at the hotel at 5:30 am this morning and bring her to the bus station. From there she will shuttle to the airport for her flight to rejoin her young friends in Barcelona. If she was anxious to get back to the freedom of being on her own, she never let on.

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It made me happy to buy her a pretty summer dress and she wore it in the street of Grasse and Antibes, but she put on her black jeans and a t-shirt to travel.  I watched her gather her things from the hotel room and thought about what a sweet time we had together, sitting above Paris on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica in Montmartre – Lily describing the type of man she might like to marry, or lying on the beach in Côte d’Azar, trying to pretend we belonged there.  We had joked that perhaps we would have a spiritual experience when we went to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper and then afterwards whispered in the sunny square of the basilica that of course, we had been moved by the majesty of the work.  That was just before a priest clucked his tongue at the hem of Lily’s dress, indicating it exposed too much of her legs – after we agreed that he had taken a long look at their God created beauty.”IMG_0865

I finished that journal entry by saying, “Lily and I have made memories to share to keep me happier when she goes off to university in September, and for other times, years from now. Lily knew she was running late this morning but let me go back for three more hugs and French ‘cheek kisses’.  I didn’t think I’d go back to sleep after climbing the stairs back to our small room but slid in between the sheets of the bed she’d occupied, where the balcony door was open to the breeze, and I fell into dreaming. When I have trouble sleeping with all of them gone off, I’ll try to remember the meals I shared with my youngest daughter, the sunsets that fell over our evenings, the fashions we clamored about in Milan, the late night conversations we whispered across our pillows – so that when the house is empty, with her and her siblings all living away, I’ll be able to bring it all back to mind.”

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Summer Blogs – Short and Sweet – like the season

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My summer blogs are going to be short and sweet – like summer itself. Summer passes by all too swiftly – it’s only fifty-five or so days until a new generation of moms and dads will be giving their eighteen-year-old kids a hug good-bye that is supposed to last until Thanksgiving. Maybe that’s a kid that’s been trying your patience staying out all night because of a melancholy summer romance, or just hanging out with friends they’ve had since grade school.  A kid who is supposed to be a ‘young adult’ but perhaps needs to be reminded to shower sometimes, or find their bedroom floor, or hasn’t exactly floored you with their organizational skills – due of course, to that still developing frontal lobe excuse.

I’ve been there. Dreading a September that won’t involve getting back to the usual routine but instead will leave an emptiness in an otherwise busy house. A September that will involve wondering how often is the ‘okay’ amount to check in, instead of seeing my daughter come in the back gate after school still reading a book while she walked along.

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They left in other ways, too. My son went of to be a lift operator on a ski hill six hundred miles away. He had cell service at the tip top of the mountain and would call in the early morning – probably the time of day he felt loneliest. But that same son went to film school years later and helped me direct my very own short, short video about that crazy, early time of learning a new way of being a family.  The video goes along with the story that those changing times led me to tell with my book, Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest.(available on Amazon). Share the video with those moms and dads, sisters or aunts that you know that are going to have a different sort of September. It’ll make them smile.

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