Coping as an empty nester: 'Stuck with one foot in the past and one in the future'

It’s 30 degrees, the hottest day of summer so far – even though it is September – and the horse chestnuts are already autumnal brown, infected by a canker that accelerates their seasonal swap. The day feels out of sorts. I’m becoming an empty nester.

I sit under a silver birch tree, sweating, as tiny yellow leaves float down in the breeze above me, dancing in the dappled sunlight like phosphorescence in a night-time sea. The grasses are golden not green, too. This seasonal mash-up is disconcerting. The summer finally hot after weeks of grey and rain, just as the kids are back at school and my inbox is full of promotional emails telling me to buy coats and sweaters. It’s all out of whack.

But maybe that’s how all big life transitions make us feel. Discombobulated. A bit sad. Stuck with one foot in the past and one in the future. Simultaneously.

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You see, my baby is off to university. Her sister went 2 years ago … and I have been dreading this day when she leaves too. When the nest really will be empty. The big departure creeps up on us.

How I’ve been preparing to be an empty nester

I’ve been spring-cleaning her bedroom and together with her combing through the accumulated stuff of her 18 years. Clearing it all out. It breaks my heart to take to the charity shop her precious marble collection and the forest of furry animals who have – until now – still lived in her bed and an alcove.

We sort through bundles and bundles of super-neat schoolwork; commendations from her teachers, boxes of old A level and GCSE revision cards, rainbow colour-coded. So much time, so much hard work. All paying off now as we drive her to Manchester so she can start her university course. There is some family hilarity that her dreams of freshers’ week clubbing have been dashed by a compulsory 3-day geography field trip to the Lake District – requiring a calculator, a clipboard and waterproof trousers. She is adamant in refusing the latter, not good for her street cred apparently. I say when the rain is lashing her freezing legs and it’s a 10-mile trudge back to her hostel she’ll wish she had them. But with a pang I realise that I won’t be there, I can’t insist. Can’t protect. That it’s her life now. Her decision. But it’s hard to put down the habit of 2 decades of intensive mothering.

We went on a – scorching – trip to Ikea, where, along with all the other parents and university fledglings, we bought saucepans and bedding, towels and a mighty bank of plugs (so she can charge her speaker, phone, AirPods, laptop and vape all at the same time). I veer between 2 states.

One is feeling inordinately proud that she has made it to Manchester, the place she most wanted to study at, with her hive of good mates (who have basically lived in our house for the last two years). The second state is feeling entirely bereft at her going … along with her friends. Our house has been a kind of informal sixth form common room for the kids at our local comprehensive; we live just round the corner. I find myself welling up when I think of the kitchen being quiet, her bedroom empty, the house devoid of teens. It’s going to be awfully quiet around here.

What I miss as empty nester

And there is something bigger too. The end of a massive life phase. My husband and I became parents nearly 21 years ago. Practically every day since, we have been tending to kids’ needs: making food, running baths, picking up towels, getting them out of bed, chivvying about homework, hanging out watching TV, going for walks. Keeping them and their needs in mind. Being present, keeping them alive. And now the everyday-ness of that is over. In its way that is as humongous a shift as becoming a parent in the first place.

With both daughters gone, the days seem endless, luxuriant. There is so much time for me, for us (me and my long-suffering husband of nearly 30 years), for my work with my community of midlife women at NOON. Yes, there is a lot more time to indulge all my passions; cold swimming, writing my book Much More to Come: Lessons on the Mayhem and Magnificence of Midlife, just published by Harper Collins.

But there is also a sense of having several extra arms that are not being used. A bit like when I was made redundant from an incredibly busy and hectic job and just didn’t know what to do with the all the hours I suddenly had in the day with nothing to fill them. This empty nest business is another massive midlife shift. Another step change.

I know, having survived one big transition that what initially feels strange and alien eventually becomes normal. That slowly we adjust. That it is difficult, but possible.

But that bigger knowledge of how change happens doesn’t help in the moment. When I look at her dear, familiar frame, I am easily undone by the thought of my baby in her student kitchen, frying eggs or boiling pasta in her new pans without me. In the days before she goes I find myself struggling to hold back the tears when I clasp one of her hands and find it still endearingly squidgy. She looks at me like I’m going mad, seeing my eyes fill. How can I tell her that to hold one of her hands is to be teleported back in time; that a vivid memory is playing inside my head. She is a toddler, standing on my lap on the bus, her blonde curls and cheeks pressed into mine. We’re playing our favourite game.

I say: “I love you ALL!”

She says: “I love you BIT.”

I pretend to cry and she gives me a sticky hug and shouts: “No – silly Mummy – I love you ALL! Not BIT.”

We play this game over and over again. Her relishing her power to withhold her affection. Me helplessly adoring.

I have a theory that children who have been particularly well loved have a Ready Brek glow around them; a kind of undentable force field that says the world is a benign place which will greet them with a smile. That, really, providing that and only that, is the true parental job.

A Jamaican friend said to me once: “The love we give our children is non-conditional, it is their birthright. We are here to love them as much as we can and we ask for nothing in return. Just the joy of giving that love, of nurturing them.” He is right. I love that. So much parental love can feel a bit conditional. We can fall into the trap of thinking that they owe us, or should be like us, or should be grateful – but the truth is, our kids don’t owe us anything. We give our love freely to propel them into the future. In the same way that we gave them life.

I think about all of this as her departure draws closer – just wandering into her bedroom full of packed bags makes me weep. Her going is like a constant internal ache. I well up whenever I think of it. I wear my golden Queenager sunglasses like a mask to hide from her how much I mind.