Category: empty nest
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I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons with You
Seated on the floor surrounded by moving bins, Taylor Swift’s music played in the background (randomly on my daughter’s Spotify) while I rummaged through my three kids’ middle school papers. My twins had just started sixth grade when we moved here and my youngest began fourth. Change is rarely easy…
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The Reminiscing
Most people merely laugh and cry while pouring over 1000’s of photos when packing up to move. This deep thinker took it to another level, wondering if Socrates would have included the usefulness of photographs and videos in his idiom that the “unexamined life is not worth living”. Do reminiscing…
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Texas Tuesday – The Backstory
The Summary In the last three years, I’ve been to Texas eight times. Last Spring, I stayed a month. My then-remote position made it possible. Though I have seen and stayed in several Texas cities and towns, the state is beyond enormous and I’ve barely scratched the hot soil. I’ll…
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Moving: The Stuff
We grow up and make a home of our own. Some of us buy houses, condos or apartments. Whatever the structure, we collect some STUFF. And, I’m not a collector. So, how did I end up with so much? Photos capturing all we have done as a family make me…
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Moving: The Highlight Reel
We finally moved last week. My experience confirms the myriad of lists claiming moving is one of the top five life stressors. I’m also grateful to God that it was only moving stress and nothing more serious. We made it out alive😉, relatively in-tact physically, and are giving ourselves the…
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You’re Middle-Age When…Morning Routine
During the morning routine at the kitchen island, you realize that the decades of kid-related conversation between you and your spouse has been replaced by aging-body questions. The conversation goes something like this… Me: “How is your shoulder this morning?” Husband aggressively grabs shoulder, massaging it, then moves his arm…
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And So She Flew…Again
I laid in bed, silently grumbling that I was awake at 5:30am and didn’t need to be on that particular Friday morning. My eldest daughter was getting ready for work upstairs and I wondered if her Shark hair styler woke me. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, hoping…
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When the Adult Kids Move Back Home, Must Mom and Dad Step it Back Up?
My husband and I were slow to adjust to the empty nest. When our third child moved out a year ago, we shuffled through the house aimlessly for a couple of months. Cooking dinner according to the kids’ various work and gym schedules was no longer necessary. Going out to…
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Mid-Life Snoring?!
While raising my three children, the mere whisper of “Mama” at 2am bolted me straight up and out of REM sleep. If one of them rumbled a quiet cough, I was awake. My eyes shot open at the sound of someone streaming water from the fridge at 4am. Like most…
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When I Returned, The Workplace Had Changed
Cultural differences A few years ago, I was working in Human Resources with father and daughter co-owners of a small healthcare company. Having moved to the U.S. with an unlimited cash stream from their home country, they wrongly assumed that money really can buy anything. Payroll was viewed as a…
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Are We in “Mid-Life” or on the Back 9?
Speaking in golf terms for my husband, I answer across the room, “we are on the back nine, no longer in mid-life”. He’s not happy. “Why do you have to say that?” We were talking about him turning 60 last summer and me being deep into my 50’s. It’s a…
Tales from a Mid-Lifer 