Empty Nest

A long-term friend who I rarely see but am fond of may have mistexted me the other night, thinking she was reaching out to someone else. She wrote that her son was very upset with college rejection letters (it’s very tough for the kids these days from what I can see) and was lashing out at her. He had first hidden the rejections and was now blaming her for his lack of choices with typical adolescent logic. She was having a hard time not giving it back to him when he castigated her.

Why do I think this was a “butt text” or not intended for me? She didn’t write back to me when I responded, and so I thought she might have intended it for a closer, more up-to-date friend, or, let’s put it out there, not the mother of a dead child. I was actually happy to get her message because it made me feel like a “real mom” with mom insights to share on those pesky kid issues. Part of the club again.

Of course, she may have just had a lot on her plate and not written back for that reason. Later, she posted on Facebook that her son will attend ZYX College this fall. It’s the college that my mother graduated from and at which my father later was teaching Physics when they met and started dating, so I was tickled to see that he is going there.

I can’t remember, and have no clear idea, why I did not apply at ZYX college myself. I remember them recruiting me heavily with phone calls and mailings and requests to come and visit during my senior year in high school but it almost created a revulsion in me, as if my parents’ contacts in the NXIVM cult were reaching out to suck me into a sordid world of branding, brainwashing, and bohemia. I felt unable to compete with my mother as a teenager (she was very beautiful) and my parents’ origin story overwhelmed me. So I struck out for the Midwest and Quaker values.

A lot of my friends are around the same age as me right now, and have children leaving home for college or moving out of the house. They are in “empty nest” mode. Which means, like me, they are searching for a new identity, a new plan for their lives. I can see that this is a type of grief too, even if the child is still alive and well. Even if it’s what you wanted for your child all along.