The big goodbye is the part you prepare for. It's the tiny moments that follow that nobody quite warns you about.
You know your last, or only, child is leaving home. You've known for months. There have been applications, forms, packing lists and an inordinate amount of money spent on things you were fairly certain you already owned.
You've helped cram their belongings into bags and boxes, delivered them to wherever they're going, hugged them goodbye while trying to disguise your sobs, and driven home feeling a little empty but enormously proud of the independent young adult you've somehow managed to produce.
And then, three days later, you're standing in the supermarket looking at sausages. His sausages. The ones you've been buying automatically for years. Your hand is practically halfway towards the packet before you remember that he isn't there to eat them, and for a moment you're absurdly nostalgic about processed meat.
Nobody really prepares you for those little moments. The big goodbye is emotional, of course, but at least you know it's coming. It's afterwards that parenthood starts popping up in extremely ordinary places.
The laundry basket, for example, now takes so long to fill. You put on a wash and wonder where the rest of it is. Where are the enormous sweatshirts, the socks and the jeans that somehow required immediate laundering despite having been worn for approximately 45 minutes?
For years, laundry has been the household task that never ends -- and, oh, how you've complained! Then suddenly it has the decency to pause occasionally, and instead of dancing around the washing machine in triumph, you find yourself missing the pile.
At which point you should probably remind yourself that this is good news. Your child has gone off into the world. They're meeting people you don't know, finding their way around somewhere new, discovering that towels don't actually wash themselves and, with any luck, having the sort of adventures they'll still be talking about at 40. You did, after all, spend all those years raising them to become independent. It's just slightly inconvenient that they listened.
A different sort of home
Once you've adjusted to the strange quietness, there are pleasures to be discovered in it. The bathroom remains roughly as you left it. Food survives in the refrigerator for incredible lengths of time. You can sit down together in the evening without somebody appearing at precisely that moment to ask whether you've seen their charger.
And then there's the slightly strange realization that, after years of being Mom and Dad, it's the two of you again.
Of course, you've been there all along. But family life has a way of turning even the most romantic couple into a highly efficient logistics operation. Conversations become dominated by school calendars, sports practices, lifts, homework, meals and which parent is going to be where at precisely 6:15 p.m.
Suddenly, one Saturday morning, nobody needs taking anywhere. There's no match, no pickup, no teenager asleep upstairs until noon. You can look at each other and ask a question that may have become surprisingly rare over the years: "What do we feel like doing today?"
You can have lunch somewhere on a whim, go away for a weekend, stay out later than planned or eat something for dinner that none of your children would touch. You might even finish an entire conversation without somebody interrupting to ask where their shoes are.
There is a freedom in that, and enjoying it isn't a betrayal of how much you miss your child. Both things can be true at once.
Getting to know them differently
And don't forget, there is another lovely surprise waiting in this stage: the relationship with your child itself starts to change.
When children live at home, much of parental conversation is astonishingly administrative. "What time will you be back?" "Have you eaten?" "Where's your coat?" "Did you send that form?" "Where are all the glasses?"
Distance begins to strip some of that away. They call to tell you something funny. They send a photograph because they know you'll like it. They ask for advice — sometimes even before the situation has become a complete catastrophe. When they come home, you may find yourself sitting around the table talking to this increasingly adult person and realizing how much you simply enjoy their company.
And they begin to see you differently too. Not just as the people who know where the clean towels are, but as people with stories, opinions and lives that existed before they arrived. That's quite a lovely promotion.
You don't need to reinvent your marriage
Empty-nest advice can make this stage sound rather exhausting. Apparently, after waving the children off, you're both expected to rediscover your passions, transform your marriage, take up new hobbies and immediately book a romantic trip somewhere involving linen trousers. You really don't have to.
Maybe start with dinner. Or a walk. Go back to the restaurant you loved before children's menus became an important consideration. See the friends you've spent years promising to have over. Watch a film without having to negotiate its suitability or listen to somebody complain about your choice.
The lovely thing isn't that you suddenly have to become the people you were before children. You're not those people anymore. You've spent decades raising a family together; you've changed, accumulated stories, survived difficult years and laughed through ridiculous ones. Now you get to discover what the next bit looks like together.
A family changing shape
Faith gives people a lovely way of looking at this stage because marriage and parenthood were never supposed to be about keeping children close enough that nothing changes. A husband and wife build a home in which children can grow strong enough, eventually, to leave it. There is something both painful and rather magnificent about succeeding.
And going doesn't mean disappearing. They come back, usually hungry, and sometimes with their favorite hoodie covered in impossible-to-remove stains, but you've got that covered.
There will be weekends, vacations, birthdays and Christmases. There will be phone calls about laundry, cooking, money and inexplicable administrative documents. There will be moments when you realize they're coping beautifully without you and others when they suddenly need Mom or Dad with exactly the same urgency they did at seven.
Meanwhile, home begins settling into its new rhythm too. The washing machine gets a little rest, the house stays mysteriously tidier, and you gradually stop buying quite so much food. Although I'd probably keep a packet of those sausages in the freezer... just in case.
