Mary Ruiz: Empty-nesting is quite personal, I'm learning
I could do this drill in my sleep.
"Time to get up for school."
Groan. "Five more minutes!"
Find the shoes; wheedle a breakfast; pack a lunch; and head out the door.
Despite the hustle, the start of the school year is a kind of affirmation for parents. We are doing the right thing. Each year, we gain more proficiency in our parenting skills and our kids get more proficient at life.
Then one year when school starts, we parents are suddenly out of a job. Our kids go off to college or life.
Parenting is really hard on the self-esteem. When our children are toddlers, we light up their lives by walking into a room. At age 13, our same presence brings abject social embarrassment. It is a long way down.
The best parenting advice I have ever received: "Don't take it personally."
But it is personal: Sleep deprivation; doctor visits; shoe fittings; teacher conferences; science projects; class trips; and waiting to hear the car pull up in the driveway are personal. I suspect parents personally donate half our waking consciousness to anticipating and fulfilling the welfare of our children. I am pretty sure we can never get it all back.
When another school year arrived and it was time for our son to leave home for college, I took it very personally.
It did not go well for me. For three months, I was thrown into an unexpected state of confusion and loss. I made plans to go to college-parent weekend as if it were a life raft in a sea of misery. Then I canceled those plans when I heard how miserable our son sounded on the phone after learning his parents intended to visit him at college.
For the sake of our son, I put on my game face. I jokingly told him to call once a week to assure us he was still alive and we were not eligible for a tuition refund.
His calls home sometimes, but not always, meet the agreed-upon schedule. When I complained to my husband that the weekend had passed without a call from our son, he grinned at me. "It means we did our job. He doesn't need us every week."
It was past time to give myself a good long talk. This child is never again going to sit in my lap. He is a grown man. Thinking
back on all the growing-up giggles and snuggles, I hope our son enjoyed his childhood as much as his parents did.
My mornings are very different now. I wake up early to a quiet house and read with my coffee and books. Then I go for a walk along the river and make myself a lunch. I head out the door, thinking about all I have to do that day and how I can be good to myself along the way. I intend to take some of what I know about nurturing a child and try to apply a little of it to myself.
Screenwriter Naomi Foner, the mother of actors Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal, says, "Raising a child is the only relationship you have where if you do it right, it will end in separation."
She might be right. But we parents do not have to like it.
Our son comes home from college every few months. On these visits, he wants to sleep late, see his friends and eat home-cooking. Sometimes we cue up a movie or television show to watch together.
On a recent visit, our son told his father, "You guys are really good parents."
I waited two decades to hear those words. When the time came, I was not even in the room.
Mary Ruiz, this week's columnist, left her hometown of New Orleans to attend New College of Florida. She met and married a Bradenton boy, and she's still here. Ruiz is the first Latina to serve as CEO of Manatee Glens, your community behavioral health hospital. She believes that women in leadership is what the world needs now. She can be contacted at mary.ruiz@manateeglens.org.
COMING NEXT SUNDAY: Rose Carlson, retired VP/GM of Bright House Networks, writes about retiring after 37 1/2 years. How have I changed since retiring? Let me count the ways.
This story was originally published September 28, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Mary Ruiz: Empty-nesting is quite personal, I'm learning."