As is my habit, I had finished my morning routine of making my espresso, cutting up some fruit, and getting my favorite yogurt from the frig, and was ready to settle down in the salon with these essentials and my computer when I caught a glance of something unfamiliar outside. The Place right outside my windows was white. Being from San Diego, I have never awakened to a snow covered landscape surrounding my home. Yes of course on my one ski trip in high school, but never where I live. So it is a white New Year here in Paris, kind of close to a White Christmas.
New Year. Again. This one, as have been the last few, will probably be full of big changes. Some I know will be bittersweet and others hopefully more happy than sad. The big one will be that after almost 25 years of living with one or more of my 4 children, this new year will end with an empty nest as daughter # 4 goes off to university. She has already been accepted early decision, so we know that she is going all the way to the west coast of the US (Reed College). My empty nest will look very different from how I had imagined it. No dad of my girls, no husband to set off on this new adventure with, no big family house to rattle around in together.
If though, I do not go down that well worn path of sad thinking I can envision a happy future, even from this vantage point. First of all the practicalities. Daughter # 4 is the queen of mess, even more sloppy than any of the other contenders for that crown that I birthed (was there a lingering sloth gene in my womb?). I don't think that I will miss my thrice weekly round up of all the moldy coffee cups, pizza crusted plates and empty soda cans from her room and it will be nice to reach into my drawers for a pair of socks and find them resting there waiting for me, rather than being the latest theft by my laundry challenged teenager.
Darn it - none of these prospects are making me feel any better.Truth is, I will miss my sloppy, mumbling, little Parisian teen....terribly.
Okay, let's find other happy things to look forward to......I will finish my thesis in October (I' d better) and therefore receive my diploma in November. That SHOULD result in the beginning of a lucrative (okay, maybe not immediately but the beginning of the beginning..) career that will see me supporting myself someday.
And then there is MFM. He is making a pitch for the empty spot in my nest, actually he wants 2 spots. If he wins it I will be trading a mumbling GIRL teenager for a mumbling BOY teenager. And the boy teenager will be mumbling in FRENCH. Hummmmmmm...maybe that will be the key to my quest for fluency.
If someone had told my 40 year old self, the one who was moving into my dream house in San Diego with my husband and four daughters that one decade later (only one!) I would be living with a Frenchman and his teen son in an apartment in Paris with my four daughters scattered around the world and my husband (ex) a Buddhist psych student living in a two room granny flat..........well, it goes without saying, would I have believed it?
The current nest is not yet empty, so we'll see, but in the meantime: I better brace myself for yet another wild ride.. hold on tight and.......Happy New Year.
You kind of sound how I feel tonight...must be the season. Except my mother-in-law is coming to live with us. While I am 100% in favor of doing this, I feel my life as I know it is ending. In some respects, having a spouse/significant other to coordinate with is quite the challenge and, I in some respects, would rather forego this coordination...actually, then my mother-in-law wouldn't be coming...
Posted by: Carrie Dern | January 03, 2009 at 07:24 AM