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Life
After Kids
From GypsyNester.com
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When
Veronica and I came up with the idea to write this blog about
life after raising kids, and actually looking forward to it,
one of the first things I did was Google "empty nesters."
I wanted to see if anyone was looking at this the same way
we are. You know, isn’t it great that the kids have moved
out and we have life to ourselves again? To be untethered
and free to wander the globe. To be Gypsy Nesters instead
of empty nesters. But no, just about everything I could find
is lamenting how terrible it is to not have the kids around
anymore.The main item on the first page I clicked into was
an enormous ad for an Alzheimer’s patch. |
Holy crap! We
just finished raising our kids, we’re not dead! If twenty some
odd years of child rearing has caused me to lose some memory (or
eyesight, hearing, mobility or... um... I forget... whatever..)
by golly I’m gonna count it as a plus and learn to like it.
Do I really want to remember every battle fought along the way?
I think not. I’ll gladly let my memory fade just enough to
color the overall picture and recall it as pretty good stuff. I
must be missing something here. Are these people daft?
There is even
a syndrome name now, because these days even the smallest emotion
or complaint must be labeled as a syndrome, Empty Nest Syndrome.
No doubt, right this second, several pharmaceutical giants are
frantically testing some drug that was originally intended to
treat some truly dreadful disease to see if they can market it
as the only way to escape the treacherous death grip of EMPTY
NEST SYNDROME. That reminds me, I didn’t sleep all that great
last night, I must remember to get to the doctor to get something
done about this insidious Periodic Interrupted Sleep Syndrome
(better known as PISS) that I’m suffering from.
But I digress,
(yet another syndrome perhaps?) back to the original dilemma.
Shouldn’t we be looking forward to this portion of life?
Most of us have made more than a few sacrifices to get here, so
I say, stick a fork in me, I’m done. It’s not selfish
to take a little time for yourself at this point, it’s insane
not to.
We are animals,
and as such, continuation of the species is one of our prime motivations.
However, unlike the other critters, when we have finished the
job, we’re allowed to have some fun. Give yourself a pat
on the back! Job well done, the kids have grown up into large
human beings fully capable of feeding themselves. I, for one,
am a firm believer in letting them do their own hunting and gathering.
Trust me, when they get hungry, they will find food, but you have
to let them do it for themselves. Otherwise they’ll end up
like zoo animals. If you feed the tigers everyday, they never
learn to hunt. Then when you put them in the wild, they starve.
Personally, we taught our little cubs that if they get really
hungry, they can always kill and eat a bag of Ramen noodles.
They’ve
gotten pretty good at it too.
David & Veronica,
GypsyNester.com
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