I put the word "full"y there in the title just to round it out with a counterpart for the word "empty", and not because I have entered the me-and-him-only season of our married life with complete preparation.
Who can say when one is fully prepared for something, anyway? How do you pack sufficiently when you know you're going to travel somewhere, but you've never been there before and you don't even know exactly when you're leaving? You can toss things into your luggage as you think of them, accumulating items you guess will be beneficial and you hope will enhance your enjoyment of your stay, but there comes a point when you've got to close the suitcase and begin the trip.
We're not far into the journey, Ken and I, and although we seem to have reached at least the outskirts of Empty Nesting, I wouldn't say we've totally arrived. We've been on the road long enough, though, for me to observe a few things that I'm glad I've packed along on the trip.
1. Realize you will always be who you are.
I sometimes think about what I, from the vantage point of now, would tell myself as a young wife caught up in the weary flurry of mothering four littles and desperately longing for more time to spend with her husband alone.
"Hang in there, honey", I'd tell her first of all. "Likely there will come a time when you'll have him all to yourself in the car, but here's a little secret - that ride won't automatically be without its ragged potholes and hairpin curves."
I'd lean in closer and add, "There are things you can be doing right now, though, to prepare for the ride - to help make the travel transition easier and enhance your enjoyment of the trip, when its back to just the two of you in the front seat of the car."
The things that I'd list for my younger married self could be illustrated in the story of a little overnight trip Ken and I took to Parry Sound about a year ago, just after we'd entered into our empty-nesting journey:
1. Realize you will always be who you are.
When you're down to just the two of you in your household, don't expect that the bad habits of you and your spouse will automatically disappear and good habits will magically show up to replace them. (If, early on in your marriage, he'd leave his apple core lying on the piece of furniture closest to where he finished eating his apple, and she'd trim her nails by ripping them off instead of using a fingernail clipper to cut them, chances are those irritating-to-the-spouse things will keep happening without definite intention to change, in spite of numerous reminders to the offender by the offendee.)
Nope, entering the empty nesting season of your life won't make you a different person. You'll be working with the same strengths and weaknesses in yourself, that you've been dealing with over the years. Now that I'm an emptynester, I need to face it - I am still Danette, tending to clam up rather than to speak up when things don't go my way, feeling like a failure when criticized, easily seeing what could go wrong when presented with a new opportunity (especially one that I didn't dream up).
If it feels to me like I haven't thought through everything satisfactorily, it's hard to release control and enter into my husband's planning well. So, when he suggested visiting our Parry Sound friends, Ken and Elaine, over Family Day weekend last year, I hesitated.
Not that I didn't want to go and support my writer friend and her husband when he was so very sick with cancer, but what if it was merely a selfish desire on our part to be with them, and not at all timely and appreciated on their end? What if Elaine's Ken, in his pain and suffering, was past wanting visitors? What if Elaine was so exhausted with his care that she wouldn't want to see another person that day? What if family members would be there at the time, and we'd be barging in on precious last moments with their father and grandfather?
"Just text her," my Ken urged. "Ask her if it suits for us to come on Sunday afternoon or evening. Tell her we wouldn't stay long..." So I did. Elaine soon responded to my message and we arranged a time to meet. If we were an intrusion that Sunday evening we knocked on her door, she never let on. She welcomed us in with open arms and graciously shared a brief, quiet, uplifting visit with her and her husband in the last days of his life. He died a week later.
I'm so glad my Ken helped me plan for that visit. Much more than it being a time I will remember as us two utilizing team effort in my character development, it will be a precious memory of us being able to share poignant moments with friends.
2. Know how to have a fun Family Day even when there's no family around.
That thing that they say about prioritizing your husband; to make him your first love, ahead of the children, because when the children leave home, then you'll have a relationship with him still intact? I really think there's something to that. Carving out alone times as a couple as much as you can when your nest is still full of fledglings will help to make the nest more cozy when they've all flown away.
After our visit with Elaine and her Ken on that day in Feb of last year, my Ken and I went to a motel nearby in Parry Sound where we spent the night. The next day was Family Day, a day that some provinces in Canada have set aside in recent years for people to take a day off work and concentrate on family togetherness.
It didn't work for us to get together with any of our offspring to celebrate Family Day, what with our daughters & Co. being in Guys Mills, PA, and our sons & Co. in our province but occupied with things around their own homes and schedules. Hence, Ken and I decided to have a fun day on our own in Parry Sound, a scenic lakeshore town about 3 hours north of where we live. A fun day, in our way of thinking, includes activities such as hiking, eating out, playing Boggle, and just simply being together.
3. Do things your spouse likes to do, even if you don't enjoy the activity all that much.
After a leisurely breakfast at the motel in Parry Sound on Family Day morning, we set out to find some walking trails in the area. Ken wanted to do a huge walk to get in the steps for his daily goal. I love hiking, but I'm not as game as he is for the distances he likes to trek, now that he's taken great strides toward healthier lifestyle. But I went along on the 12km loop with him, anyway. It was a good choice. As we wound around the shore of the bay, the scenery just begged my stopping often to take a picture. Ken got numerous chances to surrender his desire to make uninterrupted progress on our walk as he catered to the wishes of his photographer wife.
4. Be a team as much as possible.
When we go on a hike such as we did on that Family Day, our experience as a couple is enhanced by both of us offering our individual expertise to the expedition. Ken's good at googling hiking trails in the area, and driving us to them, and I can spot signs and read directions quicker than he does. He covers distance on the trail; I linger over details. This means that sometimes we make great headways on our journey, and sometimes we pause and marvel over a unique bit of nature found along the path.
If the trail is wide enough to accommodate both of us, we walk side by side, but when it narrows down to a single track, we hike one after the other. Sometimes Ken walks in front and leads the way, and other times he brings up the rear, making it easier for him to ask me how I'm doing and for me to hear his encouragement.
5. Get into a pattern of listening to the locals.
Eventually we got to the Parry Sound Harbor area in our hike, where the lake seems to narrow down into a river. The hiking trail took us by some shoreline shops, one of which was a Boston Pizza restaurant. "Let's walk to the end of the trail over on the other side there," Ken suggested, pointing way over yonder, "and we can come back here for lunch." That sounded great to me. We walked past a lighthouse, under the railway trestle, over a railroad-bridge-turned-footbridge spanning a river where dark water could be seen flowing among snow-covered rocks, and along a hard-packed snowmobile trail.
On that side of the harbor, the nice walking part of the trail eventually ran out; it seemed to end as it came up against a side road. We turned back to retrace our steps and loop back into town. When we came to a place where we could see out over the harbor, though, we got the idea to walk across the snow-covered ice on the snowmobile trail to the other side, where the shops were. We hadn't seen any people walking on the lake at that part of the harbor, but there had been plenty of snowmobiles criss-crossing that area, and there was a definite trail they had packed down that we could walk on to get to the other side.
It was a beautiful trek across the close-to-one-kilometer span of frozen lake, but I was happy to make it to the other side and to rest during a nice lunch at the Boston Pizza. We were just finishing our meal when a weathered, snowmobile-suited chap walked over to our table and asked us if we're from the local area. Thinking he wanted to ask us about the Mennonites, or to make some connection in our social circles, we engaged in friendly conversation with him.
But, come to find out, he was there to share with us his concern and warning. He'd watched us walk across that span of harbor ice, and he wanted to make sure we weren't going to go back across it. The ice wasn't thick enough to be safe, in his estimation, since that area had been open water just days earlier! When we mentioned seeing snowmobiles doing that stretch safely, he patiently explained to us naive newcomers about the weight distribution and speed of a machine skimming over the surface as important factors to consider in comparison to humans walking across. I think we brought him great relief by stating that we had not planned to retrace our steps over the lake; it had been our intention to head the opposite direction all along.
In processing the ordeal later, I vaguely recalled seeing a sign near the harbor with some warning about entering the ice at your own risk. I like to think that if I had had serious reservation about us crossing the ice on foot, I would've voiced it to Ken and even been courageous enough to put my foot down and said "I'm not going," if he had insisted on it in spite of my hesitation. As it was, together we chose to enter a danger zone, a place that could've had very tragic results. I'm grateful that someone saw, and cared enough to approach us with a warning to keep from going down that path again.
As a couple, it's not easy to take advice from older ones when you're newly married. I'm finding out that it doesn't get much easier as empty nesters, but it seems like any practicing we have done along the way will help. I hope that in our marriage Ken and I will always have those around us who know the territory well; those who are brave enough to share their wisdom and concerns with us. And to them I hope we always stay approachable.
6. Embrace surprises.
On the last stretch of our trek, we wended our way through a gorgeous, snowy section of woods. We had just passed a tiny little bridge when I suddenly found myself lying flat on my back in a snowdrift. Here Ken had sneaked up from behind and pushed my knees forward so that I toppled backward toward him. He broke my fall enough that I didn't crash down dangerously; maybe he would say I was laid down neatly but to me it felt a lot like being thrown down on purpose.
At first it made me mad. I sputtered my consternation at him, but then, there he was, bending down close enough to kiss. Sometimes you have to seize an opportunity to forgive when it appears.
Then, since I was down anyway, I just lay there in the snow awhile, looking up at the circle of blue, blue sky fringed by treetops. The world looked different from that angle - unique and beautiful.
I suppose at any point in one's marriage, whether preparing for empty nesting, or fully there, one could consider this advice: Don't expect Love to sweep you off your feet, but when it does, embrace the sweet surprise, and enjoy your new point of view.
Empty nesting is not all it's cracked up to be - it's more. When else is it easier for the two of you to pick up and go for a drive on a whim, to communicate with each other without distractions such as your tribe making a joyful or otherwise noise, to play a game without constant interruptions, when you can be more lax about closing room doors if you feel like it, and shout sweet nothings to each other? (Of course, the latter may soon be of necessity as one's hearing and concentration fades with age!)
I have a hunch that no matter which installment of life's series one is in at present, there are things to grieve and things to welcome. There are difficult challenges to face, yes, but among them there are beautiful discoveries to be made.
What do you love about your current season?
