Our Nest is Anything But Empty

I'm an iced tea addict. I drink way too many iced teas every day, but I figure there are worse things I could do in life.  There is beauty in imperfection, and I’ve decided to pick my battles—iced tea isn’t one of them. Changing society’s narrative on certain things is a battle I choose. So today, I'm drinking one of those iced teas at Whitby Hotel in New York, wishing people would stop saying my nest is empty.

In May, I picked my son up from his first year of college and moved him into our New York apartment for an internship in the city.  As I order my egg white omelet (another addiction), I can’t help but think about all that has happened since the day I dropped him off at college 16 months ago. It’s hard to think about that day because nothing can take away the gut punch you feel when you drop your child off at college. I called friends and asked where the manual was for how soon you could call him. I was barely to the exit of the campus, but the feeling in my stomach that day was one I had become familiar with the previous year—except today it seemed to be tenfold.

Throughout Henry’s senior year in high school, my stomach was a cocktail mix of excitement, nausea, and happiness.  It was as if I had boarded a big wooden Caribbean five-masted sailing boat, the kind you see in the movies with names like Black Pearl and Queen Anne’s Revenge, and I had set sail with an unknown destination and too many piña coladas. I was slightly seasick but also exhilarated by the possibilities of where the boat might take us. I was intrigued by the many unexpected places, people, and wisdom I might gain, and the new challenges I would face—those that bring you unexpected joy on the other side of fear. But I also dreaded the hangover I would feel once I dropped him off at his destination.

The hardest part was the heartache I felt thinking that he wouldn’t be at the kitchen counter with me every morning and every night chatting about his day—or, as a boy’s mom knows all too well, “not chatting” because sometimes silence is all you get. I now realize that even the silence I sometimes lamented was a beautiful sound in my kitchen. When he started at St. Mark’s School, they told us that if we wanted to get our point across to boys, we should do it in under two sentences. After two sentences, we would sound like static on the radio. He was ten years old when they gave me this excellent advice. I have the clearest memory of him jumping out of my car that day, thinking he might tip over from his giant backpack. I’ve kept the two-sentences advice in my arsenal, but I knew I would miss sounding like a static radio in the moments I just had to get my point across in several paragraphs. Mix that with my fear of his looming departure and extreme happiness about what he had worked so hard to achieve, and you get the cocktail of “what the hell is this going to feel like when he leaves?”

We spent so many years together, the two of us.  He worked alongside me in my tiny KOCH office, drawing and creating after school when he was a young boy—as I secretly wondered how I was going to make it all work, financially and emotionally. Most of all, I’ll miss those days on the road traveling to lacrosse tournaments, accumulating some of our most tiring and most hysterical and meaningful memories. The long road trips with my terrible driving, the frustrating waits and delays at airports, horrible hotels, tiny towns, and the ups and downs—these were some of the most authentic moments of life, strangely better than any perfectly crafted trip to Europe or beautiful white sand beach. It was the thing that made us strong, where we had real conversations about failure, resilience, and crushes. When you are in a tiny hotel room on a weekend, you get to listen to a lot of Facetimes that you pretend you are not listening to, but as a mother, you are holding on to every word. Now I know why my mother wouldn’t let me have a phone in my room! She got to listen to me laying upside down on our couch in the family room next to the kitchen with the cord stretched as far as it would go in the sweet days before cell phones. We celebrated, laughed, and made lifelong friendships on those trips, and most of all we learned about living and the grit it takes to overcome—which, to me, is the secret weapon of life. It’s what I wanted to bake into his soul.

What would I do without him, without all of this stuff—the mess in the house, the kids running in and out, and the Chick-fil-A runs? He was my only child, and I was a single mother—a true single mother. His father had a brain tumor years before and was not part of our lives. Raising him was the greatest gift of my life. When he came into the world, not only did my life change, but I changed. What I realized is that Henry is the one who gave me strength. He was the one who made me fearless because I knew, no matter what happened, God gave me the privilege of raising him, and I wanted to build something for him. So I set out to build our life with determination and focus, and I have him to thank for that; the responsibility made me a stronger and better human being. He gave me discipline and taught me about love—the kind that is so wonderful and deep that when your child goes to college, you ache. When you drop him off, you feel like you are going to throw up, but it’s so worth it.

I had thought I had prepared myself for empty nesting by creating my KOCH family,  surrounding myself with people I admired as contributors to the world, and having relationships with my family. In addition, I started a sneaker company together with Henry. I thought this would help me, but as Henry’s senior year began, I seemed unprepared. I was proud of what I had built, and I loved all of it, but I still felt scared. My fierceness that Henry gave me felt challenged; I felt a bit off balance.

This got me thinking: what if this nest they keep talking about wasn’t an empty nest but rather Nest 2.0?   What if we turned this concept on its head, flipped the nest over, and kicked out the dust so we could fill it up with a bigger family, more love, and a curiosity about the world that expands who we are and how we connect to others? When our kids leave, society uses the word “empty” to describe the house and life we have built all those years. Although the term is correct in the physical sense of the house being empty, it is so wrong in many other ways. To top it off, the term seems to get launched at women more than men. The implication is that men keep living, but once the children are gone, women’s value somehow diminishes. This could not be more wrong. Our nest and purpose deepen, and our value multiplies. Our nest is now free from our ego, and our joy multiplies from the acknowledgment of our humanness. Now, our nest has a better view of the world. It’s only Act 2 in at least a 3-act play with an encore, and often this is where the storyline really gets interesting.

When we are raising children, our circumference can be small based on the bandwidth of time and space we have—it's a carpool circumference.  But now we get to expand and breathe in new things, people, and places. We get to take the best of ourselves into the next experiences, leaving our mistakes in the past. We become more intentional about where our boat is heading, navigating its course with more intent. Even more interesting is that now we get to grow alongside our child. While they are growing into the world and dreaming big dreams, so can we—maybe the nervousness we feel is the same as theirs. We have the wisdom and space to do anything we envision. It’s a door opening to places we have never been. And maybe the nauseousness in our stomach is really just the fear of possibility and the risk of trying new things without them.

What I’ve realized with my son back in school again is that it is still hard to watch them go. Yes, drop-off is much easier, but this longing for them to stay under our wing—this deep, profound love we have for our kids—never leaves us. But in a strange way, the relationship grows into something new and amazing: two people rejoicing in the work and foundation of our life. It’s one of those beautiful and unexpected things that life hands you right when you least expect it. Our kitchen counter isn’t as busy but our experiences outside of the kitchen are beyond what I could have imagined. I also know that we have to trust in life’s movement, not just for our children but for ourselves. In a strange way, we should never really grow up. The goal should be to continue growing until we die and explore new places in our minds and hearts. My hope for my son is that he never stops growing and never stops trusting in life, understanding its rooting for our triumph. And if this is my hope, then I have a responsibility to model this for him until the end. Understanding that with God above manning the winds, we are the captains of our ship, the architects of our life, and our nest is anything but empty.