Unprepared to not be the Mom

I find it hard to believe that I am really here. I was and am not stupid and I knew that time would pass, but somehow I just never envisioned this stage of my life. Let's be serious, with seven children what mother has time to think of life's stages? Somehow with all the time spent in being pregnant and nursing and tending preschoolers and doing homework and monitoring piano practice and attending sport events and band/choir concerts and parent-teacher conferences and making cookies and school lunches and nagging about unmade beds and messy rooms and undone chores and a doing athousand other tasks a mother does, I never got around to contemplating what my life would become when all the children were gone. I find myself utterly unprepared for this.



Not that I was particularly prepared for being a mother and all that job entailed. I never thought about it growing up. I wasn't in love with every baby I saw and I was only a good babysitter because the better I was at it the more I got paid. I didn't contemplate becoming a mother until about three weeks before my first baby was born and then I was just anxious not to be pregnant. Becoming a mother seemed the natural progression in my life and at twenty-one I took becoming a mother in stride as part of my new marriage. I was confident that I could handle this new job and never thought about how it would entirely define who I was and determine what I did for the next thirty-three years of my life. I admit to being overwhelmed when Melissa was placed in my arms and there were a few months of doubt about whether I was up to the task of being a full-time mom, but after that period passed I jumped in, and mostly did whatever needed to be done.



I gave my heart and soul to mothering and I grew to be pretty good at it with my particular children. They love me and although all their memories are not perfect, there are enough great ones that my children believe I was a great mother. I made cookies on the spur of the moment, helped with science fair projects, edited papers, baked 200 pies at a time (no lie) for FFA pie sales, sewed prom dresses, listened to problems and fed them and their friends with a willing heart. Now all that is over.



Here I am, fifty-four years old, the last of my seven children left for college two months ago and I find myself wholly unprepared for this stage in my life. It's not really that I don't have enough to do. I am on State Fair Board,the Farm Bureau Board and the State NRCD Board. I am busy with the local Lion's Club and with serving in my church group. However, being busy (even with worthy activities) does not take the place of the daily tasks of mothering. Since Rachel, my youngest child, left in August, I have been composing little essays in my head about this empty nesting and how my life has changed and how it is changing me. I have decided to write down these insights more for myself than for anyone else. I know this is a journey all mothers experience, (unless the alternative happens and the children don't leave home), and perhaps this will help me and others with perspective. If it doesn't do that, then maybe it will be good for me to journal through this journey.