The Game of Life? Here's a square that doesn't exist...Empty Nest. I can't decide if that's one that should send a player forward or backwards. I do know that nothing really prepared me for my newborn babies or the sense of loss when they moved away from home.
When our kids were small, John and I used to treasure the handful of solitary hours on a weekend. A softball game, a sleep over (somewhere else). Bliss!
TV news was no less the task master when I wasn't a news director. Most days were 10-12 hours plus the commute (I've always been salaried, somehow). Sometimes we stole family time from our kids by playing video games (Dr. Mario) on their time and I wish we had those hours back.
Carly is now in Reno with her partner Denis. She has a great job at Whole Foods. Chaz is a senior at the University of Tennessee. Both are adults who rarely need help from Mom and Dad.
This weekend, we'll all be together for about 52 hours. Sorta. Carly and Denis fly to Omaha at 12:50pm Friday and Charlie arrives there ten minutes later. All three depart Omaha Sunday evening at around 5:30pm. In between is the happy wedding of my niece Cheray to Tyler in Brookings, SD (Home of Endless Possibilities), which is about three hours north of Omaha. Subtract six hours in the car and sixteen hours for sleeping and it's about thirty hours of Together Time with our kids. Assuming that they won't spend every waking moment with us, it's like spurts of opportunity to make those important parental points that we might have neglected when they were growing up:
- You can't write Thank You notes soon enough
- The Boy Scout Rules are pretty right on
- Balancing the checkbook is really, really important
Hey...over-communication isn't a bad thing!
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