There’s a bird’s nest on the downspout next to my front porch. It’s been there for years and it gets used multiple times each spring and summer – sometimes by robins, sometimes by sparrows, sometimes by doves.
Perhaps the same mating couples come back the following year. Or it could be some chick that was hatched there returned for their own brood in a subsequent season.
But my sense is that the weathered old nest is a short-term rental for various birds and that the chicks, once fledged, go off and start their new lives elsewhere.
This cycle of life is on my mind as I return from delivering my youngest, Carly, to the beginning of her post-college life in Los Angeles.
Regular readers may recall I wrote of two similar trips last summer; those were to take Carly to and from a summer internship in LA. This one hit different, because it is different – when I dropped her off at her apartment, she officially started a new life chapter.
Which means, I started a new chapter. My older son has been out on his own for more than 10 years. This trip was the last tie to a child who required day-to-day care. She’s an adult and I’m an empty nester.
At this time of year, milestones seem to come at us in multitudes: Graduations, bridal showers and weddings and now, just as summer seems to have begun in earnest, planning for back to school and college send-offs.
Some are “ordinary” events, like a child moving into third grade – life unfolding in sequence. But some, like moving a child to start adult life, mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Bittersweet feelings rise in these moments, when we release the comfort of what we know in exchange for the unknowns that life will bring. Those unknowns can bring anxiety, and excitement.
You may have a son or daughter about to enter kindergarten, or college, or about to walk down the aisle. All I will offer is something I heard, or read, long ago that ended up being the most valuable parenting advice I ever got: If your child asks you to do something with them, drop everything and do it.
For me, that meant agreeing to drive on three cross-country trips in the last 14 months. Each trip produced deeper conversations – from hashing through difficult periods of our past to fun things, like naming our top 10 movies of all time (“Casablanca” and “Animal House” on my list, “The Godfather” and “Moonlight” on hers – and agreeing that “17 Again” with Zac Efron just may be the perfect movie!)
We found joy in everything from our routine Starbucks stops to visits to national parks. We chatted with strangers, and we reunited with relatives along the way. We took turns playing music, leading to insights about one other and one serendipitous moment of common ground when we burst into harmonies on “I Try” by the singer Macy Gray:
I try to say goodbye and I choke
Try to walk away and I stumble
Those words hung in my head and heart long after Carly dropped me off at the airport for my return to Michigan, long after I’d hugged her tight and told her how proud I am of her, long after I’d cried my way through security. The turnstile spins one way – forward.
I came home late that night, up my sidewalk and onto the porch. The bird’s nest is still there – empty for now, but there. New life will appear in it next spring, and I am comforted that all is as it should be.
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