and life moves on

Our 19-year-old son moved out yesterday.

It was sudden, and yet it wasn’t. He’s been spending less and less time at home, so that sometimes if felt as if he really didn't live here anyway. Then he talked last week of moving into a house in Fort Langley with a bunch of Trinity Western students.

This afternoon he came home, after spending the weekend away, with his buddy in a pickup right on his bumper. They loaded up his bags and bags of Valu-Village clothes, his drum kit, his mattress, his dresser, his TV, game system and DVD player into the car and truck and away they went. He's planning to live in a tent in the basement of the boys’ house. He's happy. Am I?

My feelings are mixed. On one hand I feel sad. It reminds me of all the other severings I’ve had from him. The first one came at birth. For nine months this person lived inside me. I can’t say I wasn’t relieved after birth, when I had my body to myself again. And yet, in some way I missed the company.

Many partings followed--weaning from breast feeding, sending him off to school, the first overnight at a friend’s house, two weeks away on a mission trip, a whole summer away when he worked at camp. Now this.

In another way it feels natural--and inevitable. One wouldn’t want one’s kids hanging around forever, would one (especially a kid like my son–-the king of slobs, if I do say so myself, despite my efforts and nagging to the contrary)? I feel I’ve been prepared for this, and almost holding my breath for it to happen. But now that it has, it does underline again how life moves on. Things will never be quite the same again for our little family.

But as my friend Jean says: "Nobody should have empty nest syndrome for more than 20 minutes, tops." Twenty minutes is long past, so I guess it's on to her next bit of advice: "It's party time!"