Many moons ago, when all five kids were still at home, parenting didn't seem like a full time job. Yes, it consumed my time as did work. However, I felt as if I still had time for myself. What's weird is that now, with only two kids at home, I feel like between my job and the kids I have two full time jobs. I think it's because with only two at home we have time to be so much more involved in their lives. Add to that the fact that one of them is so INVOLVED in everything. And I do mean everything. It just seems like every spare moment that I don't spend at work, I spend either taxiing kids, helping with homework, cooking (egads the cooking to be done for two teenage boys) talking, listening...just parenting in general.
And today it struck me....what in the hell will I do with my time when these kids are gone? I will still work from 6:45 until 4:30. But then what? I can actually have time to work out every night. I can cook (but honestly after so many years of cooking for so many, I fully intend to go on a cooking strike for several years after the kids are gone). That still will leave me with hours of....wait for it. Free time. I'm not so sure that that's a good thing. Free time is for the birds. I guess I could be one of those poor pitiful souls that still attends high school basketball games after she doesn't have a kid on the team any longer. NOT. I will have to find a hobby. How weird. I can't tell you the last time I got to sit around and ask myself what I actually want to do with my time. It is still five years away but this all feels so uncomfortable.
Maybe I can convince the boys to live at home forever? Yeah....I don't think they'd go for that. One talks of taking the NBA by storm. The other wants to work for a computer design company and according to his math teacher, who I ran into at a dinner party the other day (hold the phone....I went to a dinner party? Yep, sure did. With the mayor and the police chief, and several others who either are or think they are movers and shakers in this town. And I mingled (gasp). And I wore a dress (double gasp). And I wore high heels (triple gasp). And I wasn't out of place (holy bacon))
I digress. Anywho, his math teacher, who I ran into at a dinner party the other day, says he has the brains and the gumption to make all his dreams come true. Yay. Good job boy #3. Love hearing good things about the kids.
It's weird to think that in five or six years we might be empty nesters. I don't feel old enough to be a grandmother, yet I am. I don't feel old enough to have a son-in-law, yet I do. I don't feel old enough to have all my kids in their teens or older. Yet I do. This whole aging thing is really happening. The kids really are growing up. I am so proud of all five of them and I can't imagine what the future holds, so I guess I will just hold on for the ride like I have learned to do since that fateful day when I was 17 and met a guy that called me beautiful and proposed marriage. It's been an amazing ride for the last 22 years and I wouldn't change a single thing. Life is good.
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