My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman (25 page)

Daughter Francesca has grown up and moved away, but I still have plenty of reminders of her here, at the house.

And lately I’m wondering if plenty is too many.

Like any kid, she produced tons of stuff in school—stories, worksheets, poems, French essays, math problems, and countless drawings, from starter rainbows to crayoned self-portraits to pictures of our dogs, cats, guinea pigs, and a bunny named Pee-wee. She brought all the drawings home, where I made a fuss over each, and the ones I didn’t hang on the refrigerator door, I put away in a cardboard box. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.

Especially not while she was watching.

Then I forgot about them, and a habit was born. When one box filled up, I scribbled the year on it and got another, then another, and I’d put them away somewhere, and before I knew it, I had saved almost everything Francesca produced in elementary, middle, and high school.

I still have it all, boxed and labeled, upstairs in the attic.

I’ve never done anything remotely as organized, before or since.

I’m hoping this doesn’t sound dumb, or obsessive, though of course I’m crazy about my kid and I’m glad I saved a lot of this stuff. For example, I remember when she was getting ready to go off to college and she was really worried. I thought back to her first day of elementary school and went digging in the boxes. Amazingly, I was able to find, in the 1993 box, a drawing she had made, which showed me kissing her good-bye on our porch. Under the picture, she had written in a childish printing:

“Before the first day of school I was a nervus reck. Wen the day came I just said everything is gowing to be ok.”

Cute, huh?

She spells better now.

Anyway, that night, I taped her drawing to her bathroom mirror, so she saw it when she woke up on the morning she was going to leave for college. And with it, I wrote her a note that said:

“This is how you’ll know you’ll be okay at college. Because ten years ago, you were afraid of the first day of school, and everything was okay.”

Aww.

Now that’s the kind of moment savers live for. It made her happy, it made me happy, and all because I had a drawing from almost forever ago.

But I still have the stuff, and lots of other stuff besides. I saved her clothes because I kept thinking I’d give them away, and in her bedroom is almost every toy or stuffed animal she was ever given.

But it makes me think.

How much do you save of your kid’s stuff?

How long do you save it for?

And why can’t I part with it now, after I’ve parted with her?

I went into her old bedroom the other day, mainly to find the cat, and I started looking around, at all the things on the shelves. Each one is a memory. Breyer horses she got from me, a stuffed Jiminy Cricket from Mother Mary, and a photo of her with my father, now deceased, both of them leaning on our old VW station wagon.

What to keep, and what to throw away?

Keep the photo, sure, but the Jiminy Cricket matters as much. And those plastic Breyers aren’t going anywhere.

I eyed her dresser, which was covered by a fine layer of dust. And on top of her jewelry box lay something I didn’t know she had:

A stack of index cards on which I had drawn cartoons. I used to slip them into her lunch to make her laugh, in middle school. I picked them up and flipped through them.

She had saved every one.

I’ve written a lot about what it’s like to have Daughter Francesca out of the house, and about how much I miss her, and all of it’s true. But if this collection proves anything, it’s that time changes things. I used to be in a sort of motherly mourning.

Now, well, I’m a merry widow.

Not exactly, but at times.

The bottom line is, being an empty nester isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Let me tell you why.

To begin, let’s review. I’m a single mother and have been most of my life. So for about twenty years, I’ve had sole responsibility of a certain little human being. But the truth is, married or no, every mother relates to her child as if she has sole responsibility, because responsibility for a child is something that we carry in our hearts.

All mothers are single mothers, inside.

Proof is, even if a hubby or caretaker is feeding our kid, we know when it’s time for her to eat. We know when she gets sleepy, we know when she’s waking up. We know that if her nose was sniffly that morning, then it will be worse by four o’clock, too late to get a doctor’s appointment. We’re always keeping a mental clock of what her day is like. We’re always thinking about our children, no matter what we’re doing, like tape that runs in the back of our minds, on a continuous loop in our brains.

Call it the mommy lobe.

That’s the stuff of our bond. We’re connected to our children, all the time, the same as if the cord were still there, a twisted strand of flesh and lifeblood, thick as a jump rope.

I’m sure that there are plenty of dads who feel the same way, and whose brains play the same tape. I think my father did, or at least I felt he did.

But I have ovaries, and I write what I know.

So if you’ve had this responsibility all your adult life, or at least as far back as you can remember, it gets pretty hairy when your baby bird flies the coop, even though that’s been inevitable since she poked through the egg. It feels as if your very reason for being suddenly drops out. I know it seems obvious, but I’ve lived it, and it wasn’t so apparent to me until I did.

Well, I’m happy to report that the nest isn’t empty, it just has more closet space.

In other words, there are distinct advantages to being the only one at home. And I’m living that, too, so I can tell it to you. If you’re worried or sad about letting your child go, whether it’s to kindergarten or to college or to halfway around the world, it’s going to be all right. Because one day, you’re going to realize that you have a lot more room for your shoes.

And bags.

And sheets, and towels.

And there are other advantages, even delights. When you come back into a room, it will look exactly the way you left it. There won’t be open cabinet doors that need closing, or sticky jelly on the counter that needs cleaning, or a dirty milk glass in the sink, which needs to be put in the dishwasher. No cotton balls saturated with nail polish remover that stink up the bathroom, and no wet towels left on the bed. And no sneakers to trip over in the dark, unless that’s the way you leave yours, which I totally get.

Hello, your life just got a whole lot easier.

Hallelujah!

Even if your kid was neat, and Daughter Francesca was pretty good in this department, they didn’t leave things the way you wanted it. They didn’t do things the way you would have.

They’re not you.

That’s what their declaration-of-independence rants were all about, when you used to fight, and why they kept telling us they want to do it their way.

Well, now, I get to do it my way.

I get to eat what I want when I want, and for me, that can mean cereal for dinner, or just broccoli. Sometimes if I have a big lunch, I have dessert for dinner. I scarf down my favorite ice cream, and there’s always enough because nobody eats it but me.

And you know what?

It’s fun!

I can stay up late if there’s something I want to watch on TV, or I want to finish reading the next chapter in a book. I can work around the clock for three days, then sleep late on the fourth. I can walk the dogs or not, I can go to the movies or not, I can do anything I damn well please.

It’s called freedom.

And I earned every minute of it.

And that’s the best feeling in the world.

To me, that’s our long-delayed reward for decades of hands-on parenting. And for the tape running through the backs of our minds, in mommy lobe, for the rest of our lives.

Whether your nest is full or just has more closet space, I hope you enjoyed this book.

Because it’s really about being a woman at the wheel.

We’re always moving ahead.

Enjoy the trip.

This entire book is an acknowledgment of the gratitude and love that Francesca and I feel for our family, our friends, and each other, but if there are any words worth repeating, they’re Thanks and Love.

So here goes.

Thanks and love to the great people at
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
This book was inspired by our “Chick Wit” column, and we’re proud that we appear in their newsprint every Sunday. Special thanks to editor Sandy Clark, as well as publisher Brian Tierney, Bill Marimow, Ed Mahlman, and Hilary Vadner.

Big thanks and love to Jennifer Enderlin, our terrific editor at St. Martin’s Press, as well as to the brilliant and fun team led by the fearless John Sargent, as well as Sally Richardson, Matt Baldacci, Matthew Shear, Jeff Capshew, Alison Lazarus, Michael Storrings, John Murphy, John Karle, Monica Katz, and Sara Goodman. We appreciate so much your enthusiasm for this book and its predecessor, and we thank you for your hard work, energy, and good humor.

Thanks so much and love to Mary Beth Roche, Laura Wilson, and the other great folks at St. Martin’s audiobook division. It was so much fun to record both audiobooks, and we even won an Audiofile Award! These people make even a Philadelphia accent sound good.

Many thanks and much love to our amazing agents, Molly Friedrich, Paul Cirone, and Lucy Carson of the Friedrich Agency. They were all early believers in these books and in us, and they’re the smartest, funniest, and most loyal bunch you’ll ever meet. God bless them for their great good hearts.

One of the biggest hearts in creation belongs to Laura Leonard, who shepherds every manuscript through publication and shepherds us through life. We don’t breathe without consulting Laura, and her friendship sustains us every day. We love you, Laura! And we love Franca Palumbo, who is simply an angel with a slammin’ body.

Brother Frank, Francesca, Mother Mary, and Lisa. Welcome to the family.

Of course, family is the heart of this book, because family is the heart of everything. Francesca and I have always valued our bond and felt grateful for Mother Mary’s continued health and Brother Frank’s continued hijinks. We still miss the late Frank Scottoline, but he is with us always. Writing this book has given us a unique opportunity to laugh at ourselves and to cherish the gift of having three generations of women who truly are best friends.

We suspect we aren’t alone in our great good fortune.

Finally, we want to acknowledge our readers. We knew we were lucky before we wrote this book, but by sharing our stories, and by meeting the mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and sons who have connected to something we’ve written here, we have been able to
feel
it. And for that, we extend our sincerest thanks and love to each of you.

Because you’re family now, too.