A Time to Keep

 
The first thing I did in the emptiness after the last one left was re-stock the medicine cabinet with band aids, allergy pills and dental floss.  Then I washed, folded and stacked every towel in the house -- by color.  We purchased almond milk and granola that are still there three weeks later, as are the tortilla chips I nibble when I get the crunching urge.  While our children are my favorite people in all the wide world, it feels copacetic to move around our home without them in it.

I finished college at 20, married at 22 and had my first baby at 23.  
By the time I was 28 I boasted four, which elicited murmurs of "God bless you...," whenever I took them out.  There was no time to get ahead of the chaos even with my husband's suggestion, "What you need is a system."  I hadn't been the girl to babysit unless the pay was really, really good and my vague pictures of life didn't include marriage until well after thirty.  Looking back, I'm certain that was a better plan for the health and well being of the people I birthed, but once they were out I did my best to keep them alive.  In many respects the last twenty-three years have been a blur of semi-consciousness interspersed with brief intervals of lucidity that occasionally lasted long enough to plan dinner before it was already late. 

That has all ended.  And it truly doesn't feel bad.  I've read essays about the "empty nest" stage that we've entered and I find the perspective woefully misleading.  To make a metaphor of the recycling movement, I am re-purposed --with much of the same abruptness that propelled me into parenthood.  This change, in contrast with the first, comes with regular time for reflection.  I can deliberate over what I do with my hands, my time, my energy, and the endless possibilities of each new day.  Outside the warp speed (or time dilation) of raising children there is a world that has changed, and I am catching up with the culture around me.  Many things have altered drastically -- but I bring talents and experience to assimilate and interact in a valuable way. 

I am capable of anything, because I'll always be a mother -- the greatest ambition that I never would have thought to hold.  In my newly tidy house there are beds with clean sheets and towels because I'm half-listening for the exciting news that one of them is coming for a visit.  Cell phone innovation chimes small images of faces with accompanying messages about articles to read, job updates, wisdom teeth, and an occasional "I love you, momma".  And, unlike their childhood days, if one of them should require it, I have a healthy supply of band-aids.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 
a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.