The upside of empty nester angst

Part of the Baby Boomer angst is the empty nest.

The house that once chirped with the activity of children is suddenly quiet.

Yesterday, it seems, it was filled with chatter and clatter – a cacophony of homework and phone calls and running out the door for school or soccer practice or socializing.

And suddenly today it’s quiet.

Of course, Baby Boomers who are empty nesters had years to prepare for the fact that their children would go off on their own, but there was never time really to be ready. You can think it through as many times as you want and it’ll still surprise you how quickly it all happened.

Yesterday the nest was full. Today it is empty.

But we Boomers can look forward to the happy task of helping the children who have flown the coop start to feather nests of their own.

That was my fortunate chore this week, giving daughter Elizabeth a hand as she moved into an apartment in Connecticut.

The new home gives her a sense of permanence that no other place had while she was an undergraduate student and graduate student; the other places were stops along the way as she earned her doctor of physical therapy after six and a half years of study and clinical experience.

Now, with a job waiting for her at Yale-New Haven Hospital, she’s moving on and moving in to the grown up part of her life.

And a big part of that is a place she can truly call her home.

While on her final three-month clinical in Ohio, she stored much of her stuff at my home and the home of her mother.

Now all that stuff is making its way from storage to actual use. My part was to transport the stuff I had stored in New Hampshire to her in Connecticut, then helping unload and unpack.

She unpacked dishes and linen and pots and pans. She inspected framed pictures to find their correct display space on walls. Coats went into the closet, books into the bookcases. We put together a rocking chair that she bought and shipped home while doing a humanitarian medical visit to Nicaragua.

She is finding a place and a use for the several items donated to her by family – a lamp here, a teapot there. Everything is finding a home within the home.

When many of the family gathered in New Jersey for Thanksgiving Elizabeth (pictured above) and her cousin Sara, who also now has a job after many years of undergraduate/graduate schooling, received their Christmas angels.

These are a tradition in my family, handmade by my sister Ella. They can go on a mantle as a decoration or as a topper for the Christmas tree. You get one when you have a home.

In the end empty nesting isn't so empty after all because you realize that several pieces of you have moved in with them.