Dear ones, it’s such new times here right now, a bit of a feeling: The foundation is crumbling. I noticed this when I had a dream about fear of loss while on holiday at the Baltic Sea. I woke up completely flabbergasted and then went jogging to clear my head and then thought: Sure.
There are a lot of changes going on at the same time, so the foundations of the last few years are really shaking. The body and hormones are changing in women my age, it feels different. Journalism as I learnt it no longer exists, I’m reinventing myself in my job to some extent, I’m meeting so many new people and I’m often starting from scratch again, not just in my job but also in my hobbies. So many firsts again. And my own parents are getting older. And the children are growing up.
The boys have just been away from home for a whole two weeks for the first time, the older one is now doing her thing as a student anyway, the care that has been part of our parental lives since her birth 19 years ago (and during pregnancy before that) is giving way to a new freedom.
But this caring was so much a part of our everyday life that, although I often find myself moving through the new aggregate state of parenthood, I’m not always completely confident. I’m not yet used to going on holiday without children, for example, everything feels old and new at the same time.
New times: The only ones without children on the beach
I was sitting on the beach at Kühlungsborn and it felt like we were the only ones without children. Bare legs scampered through the sand, carrying buckets of water to castles, babies were soothed in their mum’s arms, bum bums sat on their dads‘ laps, expectant mothers stroked their bellies. That makes me melancholy, because it will never come back.
But then there are also „hungry, wee-wee, thirsty“ tantrums, sibling disputes, being left to fend for yourself, tired faces from all-nighters. Then I calm down and think: We’ve already had that, I don’t need it again. But I also think about how quickly they grew up, our little ones. And that everything is worth it.
My thought while jogging was: We can enjoy times without children if we know that the little ones will come back afterwards. We can enjoy time out with only children if we are all together again afterwards. We can enjoy unemployment when the new job starts in 6 weeks, we can look back happily on a single life when we know that great love will come afterwards.
When our children were small, I dreamed of lonely days at the beach with a book and reading without interruptions. Most definitely. Now I have them and think: this is how it’s going to stay, this is going to be our life, I’ll never get a wet sandy smooch from my own child again. Can I sit back and enjoy it or should I use this time for something else? That there’s even room for such thoughts again!
And then, after their 18-hour bus journey, the over-the-hill kids meet us parents at the station and say: „God, you look exhausted!“ THEY say that to us, not us to them, haha. Role reversal. One twin says: „Sorry, but I really didn’t miss you at all.“ And we say: „Hey, that means you can manage without us, that’s great. And at the same time, the other twin is looking forward to being home again, enjoying a sandwich with children’s sausage, looking forward to their own bed, to their usual food, to home.
They manage without us. But they still live here. Despite the on-and-off melancholy, we really enjoyed our time away because we knew they would be back. But we have to get used to the idea that they’ll soon be graduating too, that they’ll only pop in from time to time.
And we love that they’re showing us that they can do it, that they can manage without us. Even now. We couldn’t be prouder, but we already realise how we romanticise the childhood days, how we store them away as „the good old days“, how we see smiling faces in photos and nights of worry that we didn’t wake through. How all of this slips into the past. Presumably that’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s exactly how it should be.
We must and may get used to it now. And even if they don’t live here any more soon, we’ll still be their parents, they’ll come back and go to the fridge like they used to. It’s the course of time, the course of things and everything remains in flux and will fall into place, even if that sometimes makes us melancholy. And sometimes just incredibly happy.
