These are a few words from the latest book I am reading, Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s a beautiful book, and in the chapter I am on now she reminisces about how empty her heart felt when her daughters went off to college, and she tried to avoid coming home to an empty house. I get it.
My four wonderful kids come to visit every year in the summer. They make the journey to our home on an island off the coast of Maine and they stay for as long as they can afford to. When they are all here it is chaos, a wonderful glorious chaos. The house is full of them, their partners, our dogs, their dogs. When the weather is great we are out in the water, kayaking, or hiking in the woods. I put on a huge lobster boil for a big night in the garden and we drink too much and dance in the grass and don’t want it to end.
Then they leave. Today the last of them left and I am left alone in the house (my wife is driving her to an airport and then heading elsewhere for a week). I hate it, as the time togerher feels like it slipped away, way too quickly. It happens every year, and any time they come to visit now, because these family reunions are precious and few and remind me of the wondeful time it was to have them growing up in the house together. We were a lucky family, and we all know it.
The day the first one went off to college was the first time I felt like this – empty. All of us – me and my wife and the other 3 kids – drove her to school, and the moment we had to leave her we all hugged and cried and I will never forget it. My wife set the table for 6 for days before remembering she was…gone. Then the others left in turn, and the last one…oh, the last one was just as hard as the first one. We dropped him off and couldn’t stop hugging him, and cried most of the way home…to an empty house. So on days like today I remember all of those moments.
The best thing to do is go take the dogs for a walk, read my book, go to bed early (they keep me up way past my usual bedtime when they are here) and wait for the next time we are to all be together. Wait! That’s only in two months! One of them is getting married and we will all of course be there. Can’t wait.
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