It’s been years now, but I distinctly recall how Lori answered the phone when I called to check on her. “I’m doing better this time,” she said, “I’m not crying…at least not much.”
Two days before, we had left our youngest daughter, Madi, at her apartment, where she would attend her first year of college. Lori returned the next day, “to help Madi get settled.” That was true, but I knew more: Letting our children go can be heart-wrenching for parents.
All four of our children flew to different places, one after the other, over four successive years. And quite suddenly, it seemed, they were gone.
We felt a lump in our throats when Mary-Elizabeth left for college and then New York City; next, we longed for his laughter after Dave moved to Danville, KY., to attend Centre College; and then we missed Harrison standing in front of the kitchen cabinets, rummaging for sugary treats.
But when that last one leaves the nest, in this case, Madison, it made all the children’s absences seem so final.
The day after Madi left, I walked through the house in the early morning hours. I felt an eerie silence where once I had heard children giggling, or booming their music, or calling for help with homework, or crying for answers to life’s ultimate questions, like “When will supper be ready?” and “Why can’t I stay out later?”
But soon I noticed several positives to the empty nest situation: I had more room in my driveway; I could rattle around upstairs in the wee hours of the morning and not disturb anyone; I had three empty bedrooms, giving me a variety of places to study; instead of planning weekly meals around kids’ schedules, Lori and I could decide what we wanted for ourselves as late as 6 p.m.; I no longer had to walk through the house at night, making sure the kids were in, checking the locks on the doors, and turning off lights; and I didn’t have to rush to get in the shower before the kids depleted the hot water supply.
But those are minor conveniences. They didn’t come close to replacing the joy of our children’s presence. Hope comforted me in their absence: the hope that our children’s leaving would help them become all they were intended to be and that they could thereby influence others for the good, the true, and the beautiful in life.
Children, after all, are meant to grow up, leave, and make a difference. As painful as it is to let them go, it’s more hurtful to keep them home when it’s time for them to fly to freedom. Granted, circumstances sometimes necessitate a longer stay with mom and dad. Yet, even within those situations, parents can release children to new expressions of freedom and the gradual acceptance of more adult responsibilities.
When it’s time, it’s time. Goodbyes may not be forever, but they are steps along the road to maturity.
As I glanced in my review mirror at Madi waving bye, I thought of that episode from Andy Griffith, “Opie, the Birdman,” where Opie Taylor accidentally killed a mother bird with his new slingshot. Opie then raises the baby birds to maturity. But then, when it’s time to let them go, Opie has trouble. Andy Taylor convinces his son to “let ’em go; let ’em be on their own; let ’em be free like they was intended.”
And Opie does. Each bird flies to freedom. Then, Opie looks at the bird cage. To him, it looks “awful empty.”
And Andy, the wise, sage of comedy, agrees but then adds, “But don’t the trees seem nice and full?”
Having raised them as best we can, we let our children go. And instead of looking at the empty nest, we do well to look at the trees—the possibilities that lie ahead for our children, the fullness they can bring to others’ lives— and with a sigh of satisfaction, say with the good Sherriff of Mayberry, “My, but don’t the trees seem nice and full?”
Yes, indeed, they do.