Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Name change?


I am thinking of changing the title of this blog to "Tales from Ron & Laura's Bed & Breakfast - Storage Facility and other adventures..." Doesn't sound quite right, does it? Our nest isn't quite empty right now but it's not full either. Neither Beckie nor Mandi have a different primary address at the moment, but neither spend much actual time here. This is another transitionary period for them and Beeson B & B is just a place to land on the way to their next adventure.

So now I am adjusting to having two of them home, but in a different way. The garage is full of storage boxes filled with their childhood, high school and college mementos and odds and ends of furniture from college apartments. Thanks to a couple weekends of intense cleaning, sorting and donating and my incredible organizational skills, we are still able to park one car inside.

The hardest part of all of this and what I struggle with the
most is how to be the mother of adult children - how to NOT give advice, lecture, ask what their plans are or show too much concern. My tongue is pierced from the repeated times I have bitten it to keep from telling them to "be careful" or to tell them how worried I am about their travel plans. Even so, I have slipped MANY times and said more than I should have. Once it's out there, you can't take it back and believe me when I tell you that they will never forget it.

It's all about the letting go. I have said it before and I'll say it again - letting go has been the hardest part of parenting for me. I am not good at it - AT ALL. It's difficult when your children don't need you to kiss their bumps and bruises anymore, although when they have problems these days, it's a little more complicated than that. For now I have to settle for being their soft place to land when they ask for it and not when I think they need it.

Our storage capacity is just about full but there is one room vacant at the Beeson Bed & Breakfast. Any takers?

2 comments:

Don Meyer said...

I like Beeson B&B for a title.
What? You still hangin' out a home?
As to the giving of advice, now it's Cliff who says to me when I go out in the scooter, "Be careful. Watch out for traffic." And the like.

Kevin said...

Leave a light on for me, will ya? Hang in there sweetie....one day you'll be sad that your garage no longer has boxes of the girls' mementos.