empty nesters

It's so quiet around here, Steve says as he wanders into the room where I am working. A couple of hours later, I poke my head into his office to say the same.  It's a strange feeling, being on our own. We have so rarely been alone in our own house, not for almost seven years.

A few days of tears in the morning turning to smiles by mid-afternoon, and we have moved from one era of our lives to the next. For him, a world of adventure has opened up, one with its own playground full of cars he can actually drive and two climbing apparatus, where everyone chatters in French or Dutch and he is surrounded by other tiny "big boys and girls" like himself all day long. In only a week, a couple of lovely maternelle teachers have finished potty training him for us, he is answering to the Francophone pronunciation of his name, and casually dropping full, useful sentences in French amid plenty of French-ish gibberish. He loves being a big boy. At drop off now he looks at us and says, "Am I going to cry today?" and swaggers into the classroom with a satirical grin on his face. And Violette's timidity at being the new kid at school last year has been replaced by the confidence of having friends to meet up with on the first day of school and knowing her way around, and being able to show her little brother the ropes. She spies on him during recreation time and reports back to us what he played and whether or not he seemed happy. Today she said that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up because she wants to teach Petite Section, just like Townsie's teachers.

For me, there are now no more mid-day snuggles or tantrums (except on Wednesdays and weekends), no more wondering how to find an unaccompanied hour for groceries or a museum, and far fewer deep knee bends a day to pick up the thousands of little items and pieces that we seem to have accumulated, and which scatter themselves through our rooms with abandon. Once again, as before I had children, it is up to me to prove that I can do something useful with all of this unfettered time. I am much more prepared now, with a few more years of life experience under my belt (literally) than I had back then. It's like I get to keep the sense of purpose that having children has given me and use it in their absence. Totally cheating. My plan is to write and write, and see how it goes, see if I can turn it into something. I am prepared to fail a lot before I succeed in the slightest. Another something that I have gained from all that giving to my children, all those parenting failures.

We had a madcap, unwieldy eight-week summer that brought us much love and travel and very, very little of the silence that now surrounds me. The start of school was always an antidote for the boredom of summer when I was a child. For my own children, the calm of their school schedule has made angels of the (not always) cute little demons who gave up all thoughts of sleep and reason to spend the last two months partying it up with friends and family.  I am still figuring out how to parse it all for this journal of mine. Memories will be trickling out post by post, I expect.

In the meantime...Peace.