Waking up the other day, I found myself a crying mess. The kind of emotional girl crying that was set off by commercials and making me Tivo every showing of Father of the Bride, parts one AND two. I realized that for the first time in years, we we’re entering a new phase of parenting. One that requires less of us making peanut butter sandwiches and juice for lunch and allows us the so called freedom of not caring when the last time the the kids ate. Sound nice, but when you’ve based your life around the nurturing and caring of parenthood, it’s like being let go of your long time duty for old age.
Our son is turning eighteen this year and while we’re not the kind of Family that’s been counting down the days till we can kick him out, we are aware that we are now living with a young adult. One that is happy to continue to live with his Family and not ready to get away from us. But, as our kids have grown up in the same room for years, living on top of each other in the RV across the country, and shared a room in our small place in Austin we realized that it’s time to honor his space so that he feels independent even among his Family. It’s not long before our girls are right behind him and we realized that we are entering the phase of letting go. So, we laid in bed and cried for about a week recalling all of the fun memories of being parents to such amazing kids. It was one of the most bonding times we’ve had as a mom and dad.
I thought about what I was really wanting. Remembering how much we’ve always talked about going back to our other home, Washington, I thought how much our son had always loved the Pacific Northwest. I know that once he’s on his own he’ll eventually head back there , even if for a little while and the thought of living that far away from our kid made me realize that’s where we need to be. All of a sudden everything started to make sense. The idea of home became perfect and clear and the renewed energy of being back in Washington literally made me so happy I could hardly contain myself for the next few weeks. All I thought about was Washington envisioning this place with space, gardens, and green grass everywhere. A place where the kids will want to stay with us and a place where they’ll want to come visit. My heart became full of female motherly juice and I found myself making peace with letting go through creating the vision of what home now means in the next chapter of parenthood. Most people are thinking of retiring, selling the house, and traveling when their kids leave home and here I was doing the complete opposite, thinking of the home where my kids will bring their Families. So, in true form I finally looked at Greg as we were walking around the neighborhood and told him ‘we need to move back to Washington. And I’d like to be outta here before summer and the hundred degree weather. I know this seems outta the blue, but it’s not. It’s where we’ve always known we belong’. He was nice enough to listen and take into consideration what had to be done to even entertain this thought. Even though he was feeling the same way about letting go of our kids, he is a right brainer and would have to work through the details while I was practically one foot out the door already.
I love him with all my heart and am glad that we made babies together.
Our work as social media geeks and freelance writing make this possible more than ever before. Taking our work with us is such a gift and we are grateful that we have always stuck to our guns when it came to defining the kind of work we wanted for our Family. We had a vision years ago of a Family business and we’re reaping the rewards of years of hard work and sacrifices. And it never had anything to do with money, but everything to do with bringing our Family closer together. And we’ve done it.
