Empty Home, Empty Mother

©TheMadeleineDiaries

That’s it, the kids are gone. Three of them at least. Which, out of four, makes a big difference in the house as you can imagine. Especially considering that the only one left is also the quietest, and the most likely to entertain himself with Legos or electrical circuits for hours. He also chose to go to chess camp this week, which almost makes me wonder if there is something wrong with him. No other child of mine, and certainly not myself, would ever have even thought of such a thing. But he was happy as a clam all week, playing brainy games indoors while the city was baking in 100-degree weather. He’s a smart one, that one. Knowing when to go inward and conserve one’s energy.                               

I guess in a way, I was called to do the same thing this week. An empty house. A sauna outside. Finally, no school show to attend, no XL bag to pack with cot-size sheets and bug spray and battery-operated fans. Some time on my hands. But it is fair to say that I was as successful as my son. Happy as a clam isn’t exactly how I would describe myself since our sixteen-year-old got on a plane on Monday morning. Empty as a clam shell would be more like it. I should have known, of course. It’s been that way ever since I have had children going away to camp at the end of June. Except the two summers when we were moving to France, and then back to New York. Then an empty-er house only meant more time and space for packing and dealing with the endless list of soul-killing chores and administrative requirements that an international move involves. Two years ago, we weren’t moving anywhere but school ended late for my younger boys, and then we had to fly to New York to pick up the teens from camp. Time flew by, and I don’t remember feeling the old, familiar emptiness that was my lot when I was teaching in college and had to figure out what to do with myself when both my work, and my two older children, ceased to be a part of my life for a few weeks. I was relaxed, yes. But I was also bored.

That is our eternal contradiction as mothers, I assume. Dying for our children to be out of our lives for a little while, dying to have a break, have “time for ourselves” as they say. Only to be mildly panicked when that time materializes and we wonder how on earth we are going to fill it up. At least, that is the case with me. The end of the school year felt so overwhelming this year, and I think my two consecutive moves gave me a strange, packing-related form of PTSD, as you might have gathered from my strange obsession with the topic lately. I swear I could have thrown my daughter out the window when she finally decided to try on the new swimsuits I had prepared for her for weeks, the day before departure at midnight. And when she threw in “a few extra things” at 6 in the morning the next day, before getting on the bus. I had never quite so intensely wanted her to be on that bus, to be someone else’s problem to deal with.

The next day we went on a college tour with her big brother, which was a mistake. I naively assumed I only had “a few things” to add to his own camp bag that evening. But it turned out that just like his sister, he had not prepared any of the items that were on his list. Which meant I spent a good two hours, around dinner time, ironing out a few more labels and fighting with a bag that wouldn’t close. I was so weary and frustrated, I could have cried. In fact, I did cry, I believe. I was so exhausted, it was all a blur.

I talked about this with my therapist a couple of days later. How packing for three children for three weeks turned me into a monstrous combination of a zombie and a harpy. I could have killed everybody in the house. And at the same time, I felt so dead inside. As if all my vital energy had been sucked out of me by some malevolent travel deity. I used to be so excited for my kids to go to camp. I was grateful they could have that experience in their lives. This helped deal with the endless packing lists a little better. Although I’m sure my former self would disagree. But right now, it seems to me there was a little more energy involved in the process. A little more imagination. I would picture my children running around by the lake, their white cabins in the background, and it gave me strength. Once they were gone, I found genuine pleasure in sending them silly cards with Sesame Street stamps on them. In the morning, I would run to my laptop to see the pictures of the day. This truly gave me joy.

This year, on the other hand, I find myself so weary. Since they all left, all I want to do is sleep all day. Which I don’t. I do drag myself around town, to the library, to yoga, to pick up the little one from camp, to the ice cream place and the grocery store after camp. To the orthodontist to pick up the rubber bands that my daughter needs for her braces and forgot to bring back after her last appointment. Then to the post office to mail said “Sea Lion” bands. Why they all have animal names is beyond me. Who in the world came up with Sea Lions? I will leave that investigation for another day. Suffice it to say that even when they are gone, our children find a way to not truly be gone. Within a day or two, maybe, I will get that phone call like we did two years ago when my oldest son broke his wrist while playing soccer at camp. I will have to remotely supervise an emergency room visit happening in the middle of nowhere five hundred miles away. Who knows. As a mother, one is never as peaceful and free as one thinks.

Still. I do have plenty of time right now, but I am having difficulty truly enjoying it. I feel so exhausted from the past year. The move at the end of August, how painful that was. The apartment I never quite acclimated to. The time I gave my children, as I was trying to save money on after-school baby-sitting. That was probably the biggest mistake. I needed a break from teaching, but it seems clear by now that I am not cut out to be that stay-at-home mom I have been for the past three years, without any help or family around when we came back from France.

I don’t know how else to explain the profound weariness I am feeling right now. The fatigue. The not-daydreaming-about-my-children-at-camp. The wanting to go away, far away, where I don’t even have one quiet child to worry about. Where I do not need to stress after 1 pm, wondering what I will be doing with him for the few hours between the end of camp and his dad’s arrival. Like a young mom with her newborn. Feeling every second of every minute of every hour between the last nap and my husband coming home. The time stretching to almost unbearable lengths.

The weariness is scary at times. It almost feels like falling out of love, like needing to rekindle the flame, like one would with one’s lover, or spouse. I know highs and lows are to be expected in a couple. In motherhood as well, of course. The fatigue, however, seems deeper this time somehow. I wonder when and how the energy will come back. I know it will. It must. There is no other way I will keep raising small creatures until my last born turns eighteen, eleven years from now. No other way I will face the upcoming Fall and Winter, with my oldest applying to college.

For the time being I might just need to hibernate, even though it is the beginning of summer. Accept that it is what I need.

When I emerge from the depths of my bedroom or library, I might, or might not, be cooking lazy meals.

Like this brilliant oven-roasted panzanella – it is now cool enough to contemplate turning on the oven - I am planning on trying tonight, while I keep working on the 1000-piece puzzle with my six-year-old.

We will never finish it, he said, after we spent two hours on it last night and only completed fragments of the top part.

Yes, we will, I said. With patience, one piece a time.     

By the time your siblings come back, it will be displayed proudly on the living room floor. Maybe even before then.

That is also what I need to do, I guess. One day at a time. The picture of motherhood being drawn while I am not looking.

I remember very well when I bought that puzzle. It was the summer after my six-year-old was born, and his sister was at camp for the first time, with her older brother. I missed her so intensely then. I thought I would never be able to raise two boys after her and her older brother.

The puzzle is a picture of a magazine cover, with an elegant mother from the 1930’s, holding a bright red balloon while her two boys play with wooden boats by a basin that could be the one in the Luxembourg garden my children love so much. I had pictured myself making that puzzle with my own boys when they would be a little older. But I guess that moment never came, at least for a few years. The puzzle travelled to France and back. Sitting on the bottom Ikea shelves we also brought back, against our movers’ advice and good sense.

This week, however, with only one boy at home, I felt compelled to pull it out. I must have felt really bored that day after we came back from camp.            

But the puzzle is here and will somehow be completed. The same way I will keep being a mother, watching my children’s lives slowly coming into focus. Where will my oldest be next year at this time? What college will he be headed to? Where will I be myself? Time will tell, one day at a time. One puzzle piece at a time.    

It is not hot enough that one cannot turn on the oven. But I am not energized enough that I want to spend more than twenty minutes making dinner.