Let me reintroduce you to something I had started once, but life threw a wrench into it. Life is still throwing wrenches, but I have better protective gear these days.
Check out petalos de maria for a little bit of español in your day:
Bird Watching
translated from the Spanish post at Petalos de Maria
My husband and I have recently adopted a new routine after work. He’s at the office before 6 AM and I am usually there at around 7 AM, so we’ve put in a full day’s work when most people have finished lunch.
By 4:00 o’clock, we’re thinking about dinner. When did we become those people having the Early Bird special at Cracker Barrel? Oh my! We’ve become the butt of our children’s jokes, but funnier still is our post-modern realization that we have become the butt of our own jokes.
That’s okay. I’ve realized that the earlier we eat, the sooner we can sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather and our recent addition of a bird bath and feeder. We’re not really experiencing the empty nest because we’ve adopted a family of beautiful cardinals. Every afternoon we sit on our porch with our coffee and watch the cardinals. We also get some random pigeons, a few thrashers, and even a menacing blue jay.
It’s a lovely way to wind down after a long day at work. It also gives us time to reconnect. What better way to do this than while basking in the late afternoon warmth and being in communion with nature?
We reconnect with each other, but in the sometimes long silences that we sustain from years of intimacy, perhaps we slip into our own minds and hearts for this late afternoon breather. We’re together, but we’re also somehow alone with our own thoughts, and often they turn to wonder and appreciation for the world our God has created.
St. Augustine observed in his Confessions to “Let Thy works praise Thee, that we may love Thee; and let us love Thee, that Thy works may praise Thee….”
It may be centuries later, but I am experiencing the same wonder that St. Augustine had at the magnitude of Creation, and the magnitude of God! The Catechism tells us that through “the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe” (CCC 32). What a wondrous gift to have a glimpse into His Beauty.
It’s a humbling realization, and a fitting way to put our days in perspective, when we can see that we have a place in this world as part of God’s Creation.
The Empty Nest
translated from the Spanish post at Petalos de Maria
The silence in the house is deafening. I actually hear the hum of the lights when I enter a room, and find myself turning on the TV or the radio for ambient noise.
What happened?
I am experiencing the beginnings of the empty nest, a new time in my life that has replaced the yelling and bickering, the shouts of joy, and sometimes cries of defeat.
My children are almost grown. One is definitely out of the house, embarking on a career in the military; one is being frugal and staying at home while attending college, but still testing her young adult wings (that means, essentially, that we never see her), and the third, a rising senior in high school away at a college summer program just informed my husband and me that if it is all the same to us, he’s not going to bother to come home for the long weekend because he’s “having a blast.”
They used to have a blast with me.
Don’t feel sorry for me. I am embracing this new experience with a little joy, a little “oy”, and a great sense of calm. I am rediscovering my relationship with my husband, and also learning that adult children are really just as fun, only in a different way. For starters, whether or not they clean their room is no longer my problem.
It was my problem for many, many years, only, I prefer not to call it a problem. It is a challenge, certainly. A responsibility. A duty. A loving vocation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that:
The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society. (CCC 2207)
I sure do hope and pray I got it right. I look at them and wonder if there isn’t one more thing I can say, one more thing I can teach them, perhaps one more piece of advice that they can turn a deaf ear to until they need it. Maybe not.
The “empty nest” is a misnomer. It’s not empty—it’s full of memories. And the best part of all is that there’s room to welcome them home.