I got home from market, last week, but I didn't write because, well, it takes me longer to recover from that monumental task than it once did. I can't imagine why that would be the case. Anyway, I'd had in my mind that when I got that hurdle behind me, I was going to concentrate on getting Carson ready to go off to school, which is only 3 weeks away. You know how, sometimes, we like to put things off until after another event happens to give ourselves a little breathing room? Like- as soon as we get back from vacation or right after Christmas is over, I'm going to do such and such. That way, we have a buffer between us and dealing with the said task. It just moves it to the back burner to simmer and delays our confronting it for a while.

Well, market is over and my buffer is gone, so I've started thinking of the things we need to accomplish in the next few weeks before he leaves. We've done most of the shopping. I think I told you we did that, a while back, and it took approximately 2 hours of the most impatient indifference I'd ever witnessed to pick out his apartment things. We spent more time unloading our purchases from the car than he spent actually selecting them. I cannot stress enough how easy the whole son experience is. Words are simply incapable of describing the ease of having a son after, first, having a daughter.
  
Anyway, while he does have all the supplies he needs to move away, it occurred to me that, with Carson being a son, I probably haven't worked with him enough on his "indoor" skill set. Indoor skills include those household tasks, which are done inside a home. You know- cooking, laundry, cleaning. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I walked in the house, one day, and found it filled with the smoke emitting from his attempt at cooking. Sure, for years, Davis has taught him the outdoor skills that a father teaches a son as they've changed oil in vehicles, worked on lawnmowers, changed flush valves, and other man things. Yes, I know it's 2019, but I will always refer to some things as man things as I have no problem with them owning those completely. But, while he was outside learning to rotate tires and master the charcoal grill, I guess I kind of neglected to help him sharpen some of those indoor skills he was also going to need to know.

My mother is of the old school and did most everything for my brothers....well, for all of us, for that matter. She was and still is the quintessential homemaker. She saw running our home and nurturing her family as her job and she did it with tremendous fervor. Her work ethic, nothing short of vigorous. She, of course, taught me a lot about home stuff, but not so much the boys. I remember her saying things to me like, "Now, one day you're going to need to know how to do this" or "when I'm dead and gone, you'll wish you'd paid attention" and I learned a lot from her, while my teenage self was only halfway listening. I think she always threw death in there as an attention grabber. Even though my brothers didn't get the cooking or laundry lessons, they turned out to be pretty darn good people...of course, my sisters-in-law wouldn't have objected if Mama had worked with her sons a bit more in the indoor realm.

Along the same lines, I remember when I was about to leave home, Daddy took me outside to learn some things he'd long since taught my brothers. How to change a flat. Check the car's fluids. Gun safety. How to load and shoot a pistol for self-defense. I guess he realized, at the very last minute, what I realized, recently. All that time he'd worked with the boys on that stuff and he kind of forgot his daughter might need to know some of it, one day, too.

Now, I'm no gourmet cook, but I can throw a meal together that you'd probably enjoy somewhat and I pretty much thrive in an organized and clutter-free home environment. (Although my standards have slipped some in what I'm calling a pre-menopausal onset of ADD) Anyway, when Blair was growing up, as mother of a daughter, I carried around the weight of the responsibility that there were certain skills I'd need to teach her before she left home. I felt it was my job to see that she could cook for a family and have basic household abilities to keep a home running smoothly. She, my student, not only learned, but surpassed me, her teacher. When I saw her making her own bbq sauce that required straining the brisket drippings as the first step and when breakfast has found her homemade dough rising for the hand-rolled orange danishes, well, I realized some things must skip a generation. I'll just tell you- I have no problem getting the Sweet Baby Ray's out of the frig for your brisket and, if you stay the night, your orange roll is coming from a foil pan inside a Sister Shubert plastic bag. So, yeah, I felt good about my job with Blair long before she left home and she's since passed me and has risen to my mother's skill level and you just can't get any higher than that. 

So, not wanting to short change Carson, I enrolled him in Joni's Indoor Skills Summer Program. The course started last week and will run until we've covered everything or until he leaves home, whichever comes first. It touches on the basics like grocery shopping, laundry essentials, wrinkle eradication, cleaning tips, and cooking basics. We started things off with a trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients for the meals we planned to cook and have covered everything from spot removal to potato peeling to meat selection to the importance of wringing out our dishcloths thoroughly. We've done several loads of laundry and prepared some delicious suppers and are well on our way to receiving our indoor skills certificate.  
So, yeah, we're in the final stretch before our nest will officially be empty. I'm not really looking forward to it to be honest. The topic has come up at a couple of gatherings with girlfriends, lately, and we're all just really unsure about this stage. For the last 25 years, my life's work, has been, primarily, to raise and nurture our two children with the end goal being to usher them into adulthood with all the virtues, skills, and knowledge they'd need to be successfully independent. When you finally reach that goal, well, it's a hard thing for mamas, you know? When our babies are born, the role becomes who we are for a couple of decades until, all of a sudden, we're done with that. They grow and move out and we're left wondering what in the world we should do with our hands then. The thing that busied them for so long is behind us and we find ourselves trying to remember what we did before all this started so long ago.

I've had so many people tell me that I'm going to love it. I can't tell you how many mothers wink and tell me I'll get used to it really fast. But, I'm not quite convinced yet. I've loved raising children. I've loved everything about having kids at home.You ever had a time in life when everything felt just right? It seems like we're always wanting time to either fast forward or rewind, but, when my children were little, I just wanted it to freeze in that place forever. To never move again. It seemed that I was best suited for that moment in time. And I'm not real sure I'm ready for that time of life to go, but here we are. And life moves on. That's just the way it works.

So, while some parents have their empty nest photo shoots celebrating the milestone, I'm gonna need a minute. Maybe two.


Y'all have a good week!