Our suddenly empty nest

Feeling grateful and gutted, all at once

Hello friends—

Darned if I’m not still in that “stunned-bird” state I described a couple of weeks ago in my piece on blessings and transition times.

I wasn’t ready to talk about why I felt that way then, but now I can share this: Our son, Max, moved out.

It all came up suddenly, a few years earlier than we expected and, as it happens, the invitation came exactly sixteen years after we arrived home with Max from India. That February of 2008 Jon and I were a different kind of stunned, having suddenly transitioned from a couple with cats into the sleep-deprived parents of a very active toddler.

This is us—a new, exhausted, hopeful family—landing in the United States in February 2008.

You might expect me to get sentimental here and ask, Where did the years go?

But I won’t.

Because I know exactly where those years went. Every single day has been full and unpredictable, and this parenting journey has required Jon and me to push ourselves harder and further than we ever expected. We have spent the past sixteen years working to unravel the mysteries of the child—now young man—who gave us the gift of parenthood and who continues to open up worlds we never would have otherwise explored or understood.

This February, when I went over to vet the house that Max was invited to move into, I was worried about what I would find, worried that I would not be able to let go of this young man in whom I have invested so much of myself, the son I have long regarded as the postcard I send into the future, the one who will, if all goes as it should, outlast me and, I hope, carry forward the best of what I have taught him (and, I also hope, will jettison the worst).

Would I be able to let him go? Would I be able to let him go there?

Part of me knew it was time. At his age, I was living in a college dormitory, happy to be testing my wings in a new environment, out from under the watchful eyes of my parents. This spring Max is graduating from high school and not planning on college. But he has other plans, showing us yet more new worlds, and we’re excited to see what comes as he pursues them. Like I was at his age, he too is ready to test his wings.

I felt cautious that late-winter day as I toured the house and met some of the other housemates and staff. But by the time I left, I heard myself asking, “If Max doesn’t move in, can I?”

The house was that nice.

The people were that kind.

I felt that much hope.

When Max and Jon went to visit a day or two later, they came home with similar impressions.

We all said yes.

And then we endured a month of waiting that I would categorize as the dark before the dawn.

Even as I was anticipating missing Max, I also would have happily dropped him off umpteen times before his move-in date arrived. He stopped eating with us, stopped talking with us, responded to simple questions and requests with shouts, and refused to do anything we asked of him. It’s been that hard and more in our home.

Then, on a mid-March Monday morning, the school bus arrived, as usual, in front of our house. It would be the last time. As Max strode down the driveway, he didn’t look back.

Despite everything and because of everything, my heart broke.

At the end of that school day, he boarded another bus that dropped him off at his new house.

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I sent out my “stunned-bird” missive a few days after Max moved out, and it was only later that I realized how appropriate that description was. In our early years together, I had called him “my baby bird,” as he accepted spoonsful of almost any kind of food that I poked into his hungry mouth. Oatmeal. Cheese. Curry. Beet and greens salad with feta cheese and balsamic dressing. All of it.

Fortunately, his new house is just minutes away from us, so in the two weeks that have passed, we have seen him many times. And on Easter, when we offered to drop him off at his place between an early-morning church service and Easter dinner at Grandma’s, I could tell that what he really wanted to do was come home.

So I invited him, and he quickly said yes. I set a couple of expectations for him, and he agreed to them. For a couple of hours, he sat at our dining room table working on a LEGO project, a white rabbit we had bought him for Easter. As he followed the directions, clicking pieces together, now and then sharing his progress with me, I heard him using some of my quirky speech patterns. Like the way I often say some variation of “onward, ho!”—“grocery store, ho!” “North Dakota, ho!” When he had completed the body and was ready to build the rabbit’s head, he declared, “Head, ho!” And we laughed.

I sat across the table from him, watching him and thinking about the unexpected ways families come together and the miracle of how this young man, who got his start in India, is forever a part of us.

And how when he is away from home, it really does feel like an empty nest.

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