A New Beginning

The day after tomorrow will be a new beginning.

Our nation will have a new president to whom we look for an optomistic future. Barack Obama will need to make compromises he may not want to make but his strength of character will be exactly what this country desperately needs.

But the personal impact of the day after tomorrow for me is to once again be an "Empty Nester". On that day, my son heads to England where he will student teach for four months then travel Europe for another 6 weeks or so with his brother so for the next five months, mom, dad and cat will once again have to deal with life in the humdrum world of boring daily events. Get up at 4:30 am, leave for work at 5:15 am, commute for almost two hours, work and do that morning commute in reverse at 3:30. My mission, should I decide to accept it, is to make the most of this time. There has to be some redeeming factors in this whole thing.

One, I will get back into my selfish healthy regime. I have let that slide in the past few months and my body has paid for it. I will have 5 months to get it back before the boys return home and I want them to come home to a happy, healthy mom who is ready to enjoy whatever precious moments they will want to give to me.

Two, I need a hobby. I wonder what it should be? I could take up knitting, quilting, scrapbooking but these all seem a little sedentary for me. When I was in 10th grade, my parents gave me a classical guitar for Christmas. I had no idea what I was going to do with that guitar but I learned to play it and spent many hours singing and playing guitar. When I went to Germany to study for a year as fate would have it, there was a guitar abandoned in my room. I played it all year and wrote a bunch of songs about what I was feeling during that year. I have those songs somewhere, I think, unless the dog chewed them up in the garage years ago along with my journal. Music is clearly important in this family. The Alaska emotions are being well portrayed in songs written and performed by my son. He is fortunate to have a means of saving his work in a technological world that did not exist in my time. So, I think my hobby may be re-introducing guitar and singing and maybe song writing into my world. This will take as much dedication as my exercise routine. My voice needs to be exercised just like my body. My fingers need to learn to fly up and down the guitar again (well, maybe not fly but at least find their way eventually).

I could look at this next five months and become very down and wallow in the self pity of life without my sons, again. But the truth is, my life from here on out will essentially be without them at home. They will always be close, they will always be my priority but, just as I wanted, they are moving on in their lives well prepared to be happy in whatever they choose to do. I will always be there for advice, whether they want it or not. I expect there will be monumental events in their lives still to be experienced but on a day to day basis, it will be me on whom I will need to depend for my happiness and I need to use this next five months to prepare for that.

I feel so lucky to have sons who are confident enough in themselves to leave their comfort zones to experience life outside of it. I know their dad and I have helped them get to this point in their lives. So have our family and friends. They have learned from every human contact about life, emotions, self control and when to let go.

So, day after tomorrow is a new beginning for my son, for me (again) and for our country. It is good to be experiencing this today.