Empty the nest if you can

If you are in midlife and have adult children you are in one of three places. You are either grieving your losses (the kids are gone), glorying in your new found freedom or,like me, wondering how in the hell you can get your kid to leave home.

I came to parenting late. After years of embracing my mother's philosophy that "children ruin your life" I had a mid-thirties epiphany in which I awakened one day and decided I wanted to be a Mom. Maybe it was something I ate. Who knows? At any rate it was what I wanted. And I don't even like children.

Now, my husband did not want kids. He had been very clear about that. So, my new-found desire to add one more person to the earth was both a shock and an annoyance to him. We fought. We struggled. I threatened to leave. He caved. (I'm really good at getting my way). Nothing happened. My periods came as regularly as the students who show up at my door every fall selling Christmas wreaths. We tried hormones and we both gained weight. We tried artificial insemination using his sperm, and this proved as effective as speed dating. Then we got tested. I was fine. He was not. His count was somewhat short of the million-sperm march. Those little tadpoles who were present were disabled. They swam upside down and backwards. The only thing that works upside down and backwards is a slide inserted into a slide projector. For my husband, the revelation of his infertility was a "sign" that we should not be parents. To me, it was a reason to dig in harder. We would adopt, I declared. And that was that.

Two years later the most gorgeous little twenty-two month old Korean boy was guided off a Northwest flight from Seoul and into my arms. I was thirty-six years old and the happiest person on earth. At least for awhile.

In the twenty three years that my son has been in my life I have seen the inside of more psychologist offices than I can count. Ditto that for lawyers, courtrooms, principals' offices and juvenile justice facilities. It has been a wild and not-much-fun ride punctuated with moments of joy that quickly come and go. He has been diagnosed with nearly every disorder one can find in the DSM-V. At first it was the common default diagnosis of ADD. After that other professionals added Borderline Personality Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Narcissism and finally Attachment Disorder. In the end only the 'attachment disorder" fit. By then he was a known character in our town...the police knew him and so did the judges. He was the "go to " guy for drugs.

Since this blog post is not about the misery of living with a challenging child, I will spare the details. The point is that almost every parent goes through rough patches. I had a decade and more of rough patches. I was so sure I could fix him...save him from himself. But nothing worked. Tough love was laughable with him. Consequences were inconsequential. He was a child of extreme impulse; he lived only in the moment. I was a MOM with guilt. There is no reason for this guilt, of course. I wasn't my gene pool (That's what I used to tell my friends when I tried to shrug off his behavior).

My son has been thrown out of the house several times. I always relent and let him come back - especially when he has no options. I cannot sleep if he is homeless. I wish I could. He goes through good spells and is a joy to have around. And then he screws up...or breaks a rule or two...and the bad stuff begins. The longest he has been gone was nearly 6 months. It was heaven!!! If he is not around me then I do not know what he is doing. And that's great. But, when he is under my nose I revert to mining his room for drugs, monitoring his coming and going, checking out his friends, and worrying when he will lose this job. At my age this is no way to live!

We are nearing the end of September. On October 1st he must either cough up rent or move out. We'll see. I WANT HIM TO GO!!!!! That must sound awful. Too bad. I want my life back. I deserve my life back. Hell, I don't even remember what my life is. I think I have allowed all this to affect my "reinvention"...he is so distracting. (Or at least it has provided a good excuse)

Reverting to being a 'mommy' is common. It happens to my friends when their kids visit. It annoys the kids and the Moms seem unable to stop. But their kids LEAVE. They don't know how lucky they are...

I think my Mom was right....Maybe I shoulda listened.