Sarah Laurence: New Hampshire

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Jumping the Nest

Squam Lake, Chamberlain-Reynolds Memorial Forest, New Hampshire

“Are you pregnant?”

My husband joked when he caught me organizing bookshelves and bagging crumbling craft projects.

“I’m not nest building, just clearing out old twigs.”

Double rainbow at Olde Orchard Inn, Moultonborough, NH

Our kids are at camp/wilderness experience and my agent is reading my work in progress. They left behind more than eggshells.

Our home gets especially bad at the end of a school year and when I’m finishing a manuscript. The house would echo with emptiness if there weren’t so much junk.

This will be our life in four-years’ time, when both kids are off to college. Sometimes my husband and I joke-bicker over whether the spare room will be an office for him or a painting studio for me. It would be bliss to write without interruption or to paint the evening light without arranging after school pick-ups. We could go out to dinner just the two of us on a whim, as we did last Saturday night.

There are advantages clearly, but life is fuller with the kids at home, and not just because of all their stuff.

Last weekend we visited our 14-year-old daughter in New Hampshire. She and her friend seemed older after two weeks away at an island camp. The girls had made rings of silver and bronze and had braided macramé bracelets. Their bond to each other was even stronger. As we let go, our children reach out and grasp new hands. They aren’t really children anymore but not quite women either.

Up another mountain last year in Acadia National Park, Maine

Meanwhile, our son turned seventeen on a snowy mountain peak in the company of caribou.

He writes:

“Greetings once more from the woods. All is still well out here. At the moment it is most excellent, as I am writing while taking a break from cooking pancakes.”