Loose Ends

"Graduation Day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising they are unemployed." Erma Bombeck

My child-rearing days are numbered. My oldest is in a doctoral program in the Northeast, my middle son turns twenty-one this week, and my youngest will be a high school senior next year. I'm not an empty-nester yet, but the chicks have definitely begun to fly the coop. I'm left stranded, my job description reduced from commanding officer to part-time consultant. Once my days and nights were dictated by sports, music lessons, parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings and endless hours spent in a pediatrician's office. Now, I'm nearly a lone wolf, without the pack. This transition does not sit well with me. I'm accustomed to presiding over a trio of loud, overactive boys charging through my house like a herd of buffalo. The hours tick by relatively quietly, with only an occasional skirmish when all three happen to be home simultaneously.

It's become, dare I say it, far too predictable and sedate. The opportunity to jump-start my previously sidelined projects has arrived and I'm ill-equipped to exercise it. What, no last-minute science projects? No cupcakes for tomorrow's preschool holiday party? Batting bags are hanging on hooks in the basement, the baseball gloves nowhere in sight. Swim team bathing suits and goggles are packed away. Runs to Walgreens for poster board are nonexistent. Two decades of constant supervision has come to an end, and I still imagine someone needs a batch of cookies, some play-doh or a homemade Halloween costume. I'm no longer fully operational. My brood is on auto-pilot.

Now there's no excuse not to finish my novel, fine-tune my poetry, go to more auditions. I suddenly have all this time, in charge of me, not the crew. They've mutinied. The ship has sailed into another port and I'm left standing on the dock, waving. I have at least one of those books for middle-aged women in mid-life crisis, a Reinvent Yourself, How-To book. But I'm having trouble getting a fix on who I want to be now, if not "just" Somebody's Mom. Sure, I'm still an actor, writer and sometime-singer, but at the moment I find myself wandering around an empty house, waiting for a biological imperative or a fire to put out. I suppose it's getting closer to the time when grandchildren will enter the picture. Ouch.

Perhaps it's the very notion of freedom that's vexing me. Freedom to pursue my goals, to travel, take a class in faux painting decor, garden. Hell, I have to start all over again from scratch, not unlike the feeling I once had gazing at a helpless infant in a crib, knowing I was his primary source of safety and sustenance. This is the moment where the camera zooms in as I sail into the locker room with the Superbowl win under my belt and say, "I'm going to Disney World!" Which feels like a highly ironic contradiction in terms. Oh, well, it must be "Eat, Pray, Love" time, minus the divorce. Bring on the pasta, meditation beads and yoga mat. And while we're at it God, can I have Elizabeth Glibert's career?