Exhaling on a Friday afternoon at the local coffee shop that has consistent WiFi. It's the end of Week 1 sans kids, post-holidays, after returning to our temporary reality in Hawaii from an exhilarating trip to visit family and friends on the East Coast.
Nutshell: oft-sad-but-getting-better Conflicted Deer in Headlights.
The advice service pieces (yawn) I've read on how to handle a new empty nest don't exactly address how to cope with the surprise, involuntary early empty nest. They say risible things like "rest," and "do nothing." Yea, right. They apparently haven't met me.
My Kaiser therapist (male, doesn't entirely get it but he tries and is kind) is likewise flummoxed. "Go surfing!" he says. I do. But a couple times a week is great for me. I don't need to go every day. That leaves five days. It's an insufferable first-world problem, I know, but losing your kids, even temporarily, before you planned on it is, according to him, a BFD.
It's disorienting and hard. I'm following his instructions by meditating each morning (leaves on a stream // youtube is working for now; Kaiser is big on attachment and commitment therapy as heralded by Dr. Russ Harris) and I'm diligently journaling my morning pages.
I'm at cross purposes. I want to exhale and catch up on nineteen years of reading. The list is long. Steeped in Stegner for now—one of his novels that I haven't read, "Spectacular Bird." I LOVE his unflinching take on aging. Our protagonist is funny, brilliant and at times tetchy. We're rooting for him. But free reading more than three-to-five pages before passing out in bed, as I have for the last decade, feels ... indulgent, decadent, like it should be a SNOW DAY and school has been cancelled.
But I also want to create/work/connect/delve deep/finish/re-inhabit self. Thankfully, my legal work continues; there's blessed bandwidth to transfer titles, register trademarks, settle disputes with insurance companies, draft trust amendments and premarital agreements, etc. Large chunks of day and night have been freed up: those parts previously occupied by completing school forms, being unable to fall asleep until they get home on the weekends, orchestrating dermatologist appointments to assuage the tyranny of teen skin, buying emollients and unguents ("No not that kind—the other kind"), ordering Hollister jeans, driving to Brandy Melville, driving back to Brandy Melville to return items, getting myriad things fixed ("I didn't do it, ask [the other one/s]"), sorting out health insurance issues in perpetuity, printing shared Google docs, oh wait first driving to Target to get toner cartridges to print their shared Google docs, getting Secret Santa gifts and food for Day of the Dead celebration in Spanish class, designing/shopping for/making and serving several vegan meals a day (for them, see aforementioned tyranny of teen skin, not me ... I'm pescatarian in the 808).
About a month ago, having seen it coming, I applied for a volunteer position at a senior housing facility. I love seniors and want to soak up their wisdom. And I still acutely miss my parents. Applying involved getting a two-part TB test (three appointments at the county clinic), being interviewed twice, and sitting through a two-hour training session. You can't just waltz in and expect to be the BINGO (and games) leader on Wednesday afternoons without investing six hours of your time. It was a reminder that seniors are AS important as children. I'll be on the nursing home side, not the assisted living side with the spry residents still swiping right on dating sights. I'll be with the people who need and appreciate more attention, not unlike children. Not unlike teenagers.
I've already learned SO much. Did you know, for example, that there are at least half a dozen variations on the main game: Bingo, Birthday Bingo, Bingo Jingo, Presidential Bingo, Bingo Bonanza, Bingo U-Pick-Em, etc.? I'll be facilitating (and yes, I saw that episode of Better Call Saul). The competition, I've been forewarned, gets hairy. "You may need to employ your mediation skills." I'm up for it.
What stays with me, though, is that they need volunteers to do what is called "SETHS" with the residents (smell, eat, touch, hear, see). We might rub a warm, lavender-infused washcloth on their hands and face "so they can feel how it feels to feel." We may give them freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. The five precious senses—that so many take for granted (guilty) and/or try to suppress or disconnect from (guilty, especially when facing incomprehensible loss of, say, parents or children)—are all they want to experience.
I start next week. They will be my teachers on this wide-open path. They will leave a light, a light on to show me the way.
Lyrics from Coldplay's Midnight, new favorite savasana song:
In the darkness before the dawn
In the swirling of this storm
When I'm rolling with the punches and hope is gone
Leave a light, a light on
Millions of miles from home
In the swirling swimming on
When I'm rolling with the thunder but bleed from thorns
Leave a light, a light on
Leave a light, a light on
Nutshell: oft-sad-but-getting-better Conflicted Deer in Headlights.
The advice service pieces (yawn) I've read on how to handle a new empty nest don't exactly address how to cope with the surprise, involuntary early empty nest. They say risible things like "rest," and "do nothing." Yea, right. They apparently haven't met me.
My Kaiser therapist (male, doesn't entirely get it but he tries and is kind) is likewise flummoxed. "Go surfing!" he says. I do. But a couple times a week is great for me. I don't need to go every day. That leaves five days. It's an insufferable first-world problem, I know, but losing your kids, even temporarily, before you planned on it is, according to him, a BFD.
It's disorienting and hard. I'm following his instructions by meditating each morning (leaves on a stream // youtube is working for now; Kaiser is big on attachment and commitment therapy as heralded by Dr. Russ Harris) and I'm diligently journaling my morning pages.
I'm at cross purposes. I want to exhale and catch up on nineteen years of reading. The list is long. Steeped in Stegner for now—one of his novels that I haven't read, "Spectacular Bird." I LOVE his unflinching take on aging. Our protagonist is funny, brilliant and at times tetchy. We're rooting for him. But free reading more than three-to-five pages before passing out in bed, as I have for the last decade, feels ... indulgent, decadent, like it should be a SNOW DAY and school has been cancelled.
But I also want to create/work/connect/delve deep/finish/re-inhabit self. Thankfully, my legal work continues; there's blessed bandwidth to transfer titles, register trademarks, settle disputes with insurance companies, draft trust amendments and premarital agreements, etc. Large chunks of day and night have been freed up: those parts previously occupied by completing school forms, being unable to fall asleep until they get home on the weekends, orchestrating dermatologist appointments to assuage the tyranny of teen skin, buying emollients and unguents ("No not that kind—the other kind"), ordering Hollister jeans, driving to Brandy Melville, driving back to Brandy Melville to return items, getting myriad things fixed ("I didn't do it, ask [the other one/s]"), sorting out health insurance issues in perpetuity, printing shared Google docs, oh wait first driving to Target to get toner cartridges to print their shared Google docs, getting Secret Santa gifts and food for Day of the Dead celebration in Spanish class, designing/shopping for/making and serving several vegan meals a day (for them, see aforementioned tyranny of teen skin, not me ... I'm pescatarian in the 808).
About a month ago, having seen it coming, I applied for a volunteer position at a senior housing facility. I love seniors and want to soak up their wisdom. And I still acutely miss my parents. Applying involved getting a two-part TB test (three appointments at the county clinic), being interviewed twice, and sitting through a two-hour training session. You can't just waltz in and expect to be the BINGO (and games) leader on Wednesday afternoons without investing six hours of your time. It was a reminder that seniors are AS important as children. I'll be on the nursing home side, not the assisted living side with the spry residents still swiping right on dating sights. I'll be with the people who need and appreciate more attention, not unlike children. Not unlike teenagers.
I've already learned SO much. Did you know, for example, that there are at least half a dozen variations on the main game: Bingo, Birthday Bingo, Bingo Jingo, Presidential Bingo, Bingo Bonanza, Bingo U-Pick-Em, etc.? I'll be facilitating (and yes, I saw that episode of Better Call Saul). The competition, I've been forewarned, gets hairy. "You may need to employ your mediation skills." I'm up for it.
What stays with me, though, is that they need volunteers to do what is called "SETHS" with the residents (smell, eat, touch, hear, see). We might rub a warm, lavender-infused washcloth on their hands and face "so they can feel how it feels to feel." We may give them freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. The five precious senses—that so many take for granted (guilty) and/or try to suppress or disconnect from (guilty, especially when facing incomprehensible loss of, say, parents or children)—are all they want to experience.
I start next week. They will be my teachers on this wide-open path. They will leave a light, a light on to show me the way.
Lyrics from Coldplay's Midnight, new favorite savasana song:
In the darkness before the dawn
In the swirling of this storm
When I'm rolling with the punches and hope is gone
Leave a light, a light on
Millions of miles from home
In the swirling swimming on
When I'm rolling with the thunder but bleed from thorns
Leave a light, a light on
Leave a light, a light on
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