Do empty nesters get better with each sunrise, like time spent making good wine? Do we get stronger with each sunrise as we age? Do we continue to grow with each sunrise?
August brings us hot days and cool nights in Wisconsin. The result is foggy mornings and dew on the grass blades. I love those kinds of mornings, but I also found that because of my fondness of dew-drenched sunrises, I end up taking a lot of photos of them. Ugh…I should expand my repertoire of morning photos. The fear grows…and I wonder, am I still growing as I age?
The craving to keep learning doesn’t go away as we age.
August also reminds me of the years we’d spend the month preparing for the school year to begin. All the school supply ads on TV or the sales in the stores bring back happy and sometimes stressful memories. I loved beating the rush and getting all the supplies as early in August as possible.
It stresses me that I miss that in a way. Not the expense, but the suspense of what potential creations and learning would transpire out from the little hands that used the color crayons, notebooks, paper, pens, pencils, rulers, and folders transported back and forth from school to home each day.
Each sunrise, they’d eagerly walk to the end of the driveway, catch the bus and go learn new things. That was an exciting time for all of us.
Do we do that as we age, do we take the opportunity to learn something new each sunrise?
This year we don’t have any need to worry about anything for the school year prep. We didn’t last year either, but we did have house guests (aka our youngest and her significant others – a boy and a kitten) staying with us while they prepared for their next move.
Their presence filled the void of not needing to prep for the beginning of the school year. It was fun to watch them learn about planning for a future, finding jobs or where they wanted to live. It was exciting to see how their younger years prepped them for being adults.
Do you ever look back a year to see if your life is different from, or better now, or just the same as it was a year ago?
A year…a whole year has gone by. Have I grown? Have I continued to learn new things? Luckily for me, as a blogger, I can go back and see what I was doing. I wondered enough about that this morning to go back and check on my posts of last year. Here it is – we had soybeans instead of corn, and the deer could be seen from our yard.
Now we have a cornfield to watch as it catches moisture from the dew, and flowers in the yard, and in our teahouse bins of papers from the kids’ grade school that I have been going through to discard.
Each time I walk by the teahouse to water my plants, I’m reminded of the pending project for me to complete. When our youngest was here to visit, I had her go through her box. I was fascinated to hear her perspective of what meant a lot to her back then and what brought back memories she didn’t care to hang on to.
Sarah Mae: “You can recycle the rest – I took what I want.”
Me…“Oh, my, that’s a lot of treasures I kept all these years for you…why did I do that…at least they were organized in a multi-gallon tub.”
Old school papers – The kids don’t want them, they don’t need them – neither do we.
We can discard them. We have the memories and the proof that they have grown up and gotten stronger and more independent with each sunrise.
So yeah…each sunrise we empty nest parents get better as we age, too. Just like our kids, we get stronger to learn that we don’t ever have to stop learning. We get braver to let go of papers and treasures our kids don’t need, and we don’t need, or really don’t want either. They served a purpose back then, but now they only take up space.
We all have to create and keep our own stuff if has meaning for us and bring us joy. The joy of each proud moment when the kids brought the treasure home for us to see, is not the object that we saved for them to look back on someday. Our treasures should be seeing how they have grown with each sunrise. That is what brings us joy now.
PS – Did you store treasures for your kids from their grade school years? Have you gone through them and discarded, or are they still sitting there waiting to be looked at and treasured again?
I have two, enormous plastic “tubs” in my basement, the size of baby whales, sitting in my basement. They’re filled with school reports, drawings, homework assignments, tests, and everything else imaginable created by my kids during their school years. I haven’t opened those huge cases in many years, but I need to know they’re there.
I’m having a hard time parting with them – all the TLC in keeping them safe and there might be material to write about in them…it’s tough to let go, but I’m working on it…slowly…
I tried to share this link with you yesterday but it didn’t work.
Today, however, I think it goes better with your current post.
Oh, my goodness, that is beautiful! Thank you for sharing, you have a beautiful family! And yes, I felt the tears well up, but the smiles won! xx
Thank you Shelley. You have a wonderful family also. And as I get older, I appreciate having a family all the more. It’s special. Something to be treasured. 🙂
You’re so wise – I treasure your words of wisdom! Family time is so important, and all the memories created together are so worthy of treasuring!
I have containers for each of our 3 kids. I kept a lot but there are also some things I let go of. I took pictures of some things and have begun scrapbooks for each of the kids. Right now they (the containers) are under the bed so they are not in my way but at some point I intend to do what you did and ask the kids what they would like to keep.
Us moms…I tell ya, we’re sentimental creatures. It was very enlightening to watch my daughter go through the stuff. I hope you enjoy the process when you have your kids go through their treasures! Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Laurie Notaro has a piece (I don’t have the book in front of me, sorry) about her mother giving her and her sister all the Christmas tree ornaments they made in school. She’s a funny writer, I think you’d like her…
Yes, I’d love to read that! Thank you for the suggestion!
So true – mine are still a way from leaving home but I can already see this disparity between what I want them to keep and what they think is important. My son brought in a giant map he had created when he was about 7 where he had drawn out all of the lands inspired by reading How to Train Your Dragon. I stopped him from chucking it in the bin. I snatched it off him saying, ‘I was very fond of the boy who made this!’ Which is a strange thing to say – he looked at me like I was bonkers – but I hope you guys knew what I meant! It is now safely stored in my treasure box. I try to keep the school stuff but as more and more comes in each year I wonder what I’m doing! That’s not really important stuff…
I completely understand – I even try to rescue things too! The kicker for me was when I was blessed with the box my mom had saved of my stuff…I didn’t want it, I knew the kids wouldn’t want it, but I kept it and moved it until I finally had a bonfire with it. It felt strangely wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! I wish you well on your discovery of what to keep and toss!
I don’t remember having any stuff kept by my parents – my Dad was a bit of a pyromaniac and would regularly make a big bonfire of anything he classed as rubbish! 😂😂 probably a blessing – who needs to read school reports from a hundred years ago?
So true, it is hard to tell if we’d like it or have material for writing a blog post…other than that, burning it sounds like a great idea!
Love this post! Oh my, there must be a secret society (or maybe not so secret!!) of parents saving evidence of their children’s school days. An oversized ziploc bag for each year was my limit and I combed through the huge stacks and kept what I thought truly showed who they were at each age. My favorites were the English papers and essay tests. Some from grade school are quite amusing. At least I think so. I am hoping they will enjoy looking through their school histories someday. Self reflection and all that. At this point I think they’d say they don’t want anything, so I don’t ask. I try to remember if I would have been interested in such things in my thirties. In the meantime, Shelley, I agree there may be some material in there for writing blog posts….actually there already has been. 🙂
(I will admit we did discard the paper mache dinosaur from first grade. And the shoe box diorama.)
WOW – I’m impressed that you were able to contain the papers in a specific size bag! I’m sure they will be happy to look at what you saved when the time is right. And, yes, anything that gives me material for writing is a treasure :-)! I would’ve (did) discard things that took up too much space. But, before discarding, you took photos of the dinosaur and the shoebox diorama right…? 😉 Yikes…don’t get me started on saving photographs…!
First of all, I loved your pictures! And yes I do go through all the school papers at the end of the academic year retaining what’s important… But then there are those “artistic / creative” things that are pretty hard to let go although I have managed to shrink the lot gradually 😊
Aw, thank you! Yes, I remember that same process – going through every paper, holding on to the ones I thought were so extra special! Way to get a head start on weeding it out. My kids have been out of high school for 5-8 years…time to let the stuff go, right!? 🙂
Right😊👍
I think the school prep time of year will be with all of us forever! ✏️📚🤓
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http://www.areweadultsyet.com
I think you’re right about that :-)! Early memories stay with us the longest!!
I love your positive outlook, Shelley. At least I’ll know what to expect when my time as an empty nester comes.
Aw, Winnie, you’re so kind – you’re going to be such a supportive empty nester mom when your family’s time comes!
Thank you, Shelley! I hope I can be like you when that time comes. 😉
I didn’t suffer “empty nest syndrome” for very long…Now if they could only come and take their stuff out of here…Mother of 5 here
I’m guessing I’d feel the same way with 5 kids and their stuff, 2 was plenty! I still have some ‘stuff we don’t have space for until we get a house’ stored at our house.