It feels so different here without you
A My Name is Amy
I feal so different here without you
by
Amy Byrnes
I went to a graduation party last night and during a few conversations I had, someone would eventually say, “You’re going to be an empty nester!” and I just stood there each time with an “Everything’s great” smile on my face.
The moms and dads at the party are the parents of kids who are my youngest child’s age, and for most, this is their first kid going off to college. These are the women I dubbed my “Little Mommies,” the ones who scooped me into their beach circle when I got divorced a decade ago. They weren’t even 40 and had toddlers and babies and even though my older kids were starting to go to college and hide Fourloko in my garage refrigerator, we clicked.
It was hot here in New Jersey yesterday – close to 90 degrees – and the gray sky looked like it was about open up at any moment throughout the afternoon, but it never did. We parents stood on our friends’ new patio and talked about how fast it all goes, while our sons’ were out on the lawn drinking from red Solo cups and playing a weird drinking game with dice while we looked on.
For years, we’ve all sat in the sand watching the boys bobbing out on the water, past the jetty, on their boogie boards just beyond the surf. Occasionally, one or two of them would start paddling towards the shore to ride a wave in. Sometimes, they’d miss that window of timing a wave just right and it would pass over them and they’d head back to the pod of boys. But when they positioned themselves in front of a rising wave just so, it would lift them up and hurl them towards the beach. The boys have been riding waves – on boards and their bellies – since they were old enough to swim and now it’s all instinctive. How they grab onto the front of the board to angle their trajectory, careening on their sides until they roll off the wave right before the surf and start paddling back to the crew of boys.
My friends and I would sit and watch, sitting up every once and a while to say, “Where’s so-and-so?” and then another mom would point him out among the bobbing figures out beyond the jetty and we’d go back to talking about kids and school and life.
***
After my teen’s lacrosse game yesterday, I took him to get a new phone since the screen of the one he’d had for a few years – that was cracked and covered in stickers – had started to look like the start of a Netflix show, when the screen splits into black stripes.
Generally, my son tries to avoid spending any more time than necessary with me. He always seems poised to run back to his room during dinner or any conversation lasting more than 30 seconds. But I don’t take it personally. He’s living in constant fear that I’m going to bring up grades, money or sex and is just trying to protect himself from all of those uncomfortable conversations.
But if I’m offering to buy him a new iPhone 12, he’s more inclined to hang around, which is how my son found himself yesterday not just heading to Verizon but then to get a sandwich at Panera on the way home.
It’s rare that I find myself alone with my teen. Had the world gone according to plan, it would have just been the two of us at home together for two years while his three older siblings were off living their own, post-college lives. But then COVID hit, and all the kids came home last March. The older ones eventually went back to their lives last summer while my third kid, displaced by the pandemic, stayed here and figured out her next step. She’s finally moving out of my basement in mid-June, which will give me and the teen exactly two months of alone time before he heads to college.
We sat across from each other at Panera yesterday eating our turkey sandwiches and talking like normal people. Not a heavy conversation about sex or his grades but just idle chitchat. How they came back from a 0-4 deficit after the first quarter to beat Middletown South 7-5 and how hot it felt under all his lax gear. We talked about shopping for stuff he’d need for his dorm room and if boys his age are ever going to wear anything other than khaki-colored khakis. It’s a thing.
He piled all our napkins and chip bags onto our trays and dumped them in the trash and we headed out to the car so he could get home to our wifi and finish setting up his new phone.
The guy is generally not a sullen teen, but he’s not always in the mood for a convo with his talkative mother. He’d rather plug the aux cord into his phone and play loud music while we drive. But between the lax win and the new phone, he was pretty cheery and happy to keep up the conversation on the ride home. And I couldn’t even tell you what we were talking about when about a quarter mile from our house, a wave of sadness went through me. It started in my chest and moved up and sent pricks of tears to my eyes.
“Damn, buddy,” I said, turning to look at his manly-profile next to me as he cued up the next song.
***
When my youngest was, like, eight, he convinced me to send him to sleepaway camp for a week. While his older sister would be there along with her best friend across the street and her younger brother, my son wouldn’t know any other boys his age to hang out with at meals or in the cabin he’s share with 10 other smelly 8 and 9yo boys. But he didn’t care. He just wanted to go and do all the things he’d been hearing his sister talk about that she did when she went away the year before.
And, truth be told, I was kind of excited to get rid of two of my kids for a whole week. I was working full time and had two older teenagers to contend with and the thought of only have two children for an entire week was worth the price of sending the other two to sleepaway camp. So, while I did get some raised eyebrows from other parents when I mentioned my youngest was going away to camp by himself for a week, I didn’t think much of it.
I’ve always said that you could drop my two youngest kids in the middle of mainland China and they’d be able to figure it out. They’re resilient and resourceful and possess the skills one would need to cope in foreign circumstances. But it wasn’t until I was making up his bottom bunk in the cabin that I began to realize just how little my son was. I got him all settled in and checked on his sister and told her to keep an eye on her little brother and then I headed back to New Jersey and my two other kids.
I don’t remember how many times I talked to the kids while they were away that week. The camp had a phone number you could call during a window in the afternoon each day that was always busy and when you finally got through and asked for your child, they’d page them in the camp to get to the phone. I know we talked a couple of times but only remember my son asking if I’d sent a care package (I didn't), which apparently all the other parents of kids in his cabin did. Other than that, he seemed to be happy playing games all day and splashing around in the lake.
Towards the end of the week, maybe a day before I was scheduled to drive back to the Poconos to pick the kids up, I grabbed the daily assortment of bills and flyers out of the mailbox and found a postcard from the camp tucked between the junk mail and ubiquitous Pottery Barn catalog.
“Dear Mom,” it began, in my 9yo’s best penmanship. “I feal so different here without you,” and I knew just when he meant.
It wasn’t better. And it wasn’t worse. It was just different.
And I think that’s what it’s going to be like when he leaves here in August. On the one hand, I won’t have seven pairs of shoes scattered on the floor to greet me when I walk through the door. On the other hand, those shoes remind me that (for better or worse) I’m not alone.
For most of my 54 years, I’ve lived with a lot of other people. As one of eight children. In dorm rooms and a sorority house and then apartments with roommates. And eventually, a house full of children of my own. Navigating life surrounded by others is what I did for so long.
But of course, it’s also how we frame things. Will the absence of shoes all over the floor by the backdoor mean that I’m alone, or just that my home is more orderly? That I don’t live with people who insist on leaving every pair of shoes that they own in the TV room? I’ll choose Things That Make Me Feel Organized for $800, Alex.
***
My son ended that sweet postcard, which included a misspelling of my last name and a last-ditch plea for a care package, telling me that he missed me so much. But despite missing me he managed to make a lot of new friends and quickly plow through the $100 I’d put in his camp account for candy and pizza.
And I think that’s what it will be like when I find myself alone at last after almost 29 years with at least one child living under my roof. While I hope I don’t spend my newfound freedom on the equivalent of candy and pizza, I do think I will use it to define this new chapter.
Just like after my divorce, when I didn’t know what my life would look like, I eventually found my spot in the sand. It was different, and I missed my old life, but eventually, it began to seem normal. Almost like I couldn’t imagine any other kind of life.
Like my young son away at camp in the Poconos and soon, in college, I’ll be tasting a freedom I’ve never had, unencumbered by other people’s schedules or personalities or shit they leave lying all over the place. Just me, walking through the door and admiring the empty floor.
xoAmy
SUNDAY SHARES: read + watch + cook + shop
Speaking of Empty Nest Syndrome, there was a great article about how to make it your bitch.
After over a year home, to her dismay, my younger daughter has started dressing like me. She went to Old Navy recently and came home with things she'd seen me wearing. She bought these jogger-y things that I have and everyone she works with at The Blonde Shallot went out and bought them that day. I wore them to get my hair colored this week and the fabulous Lorraine even complimented them, which is saying something.
When I bought an air fryer this winter, my daughter was like, "Why?" She doesn't understand my urge to get in on every fad and mentioned the InstaPot taking up a whole shelf of our precious kitchen closet space. But even she agreed this week that the air fryer is a keeper, even though I don't really have a space to keep it in yet. But we probably use it twice a day, to beautifully reheat leftovers or cook something for dinner. The one I bought does the job but also, I wished I'd researched a little more and found something a little less bulky. If you're on the fence, get one.
If I ever cook again, other than grill chicken and make veggies in the air fryer, I'm going to try this yogurt pizza crust recipe.
And finally, otters.