Empty Nest Syndrome

I am learning more about myself each day that I use my blog as a therapist. I think one of my main problems is that I am suffering from empty nest syndrome. I have two married daughters. One thank goodness lives in town with her husband and my 2 grandchildren Corben and Madilyn. The other is married and lives in Knoxville TN-seven hours away! That's where my little grand-daughter Rosie lives. We still have one child at home. He's 22 but with work and school I see him about 2 hours a week. He's around just long enough to make a mess and eat us out of house and home. He's my baby. I still try to get him to sit in my lap and give me kisses and hugs. Twenty-two year olds frown on this. They don't understand that once they're your baby they're always your baby. We do have a great relationship. We tease each other constantly and have the same wicked since of humor! However there are times that I would like to have an old fashioned Biblical stoning. When their brother was in trouble when they were little Jenny and Megan always said, "Can we watch?" So I guess I would have to invite them to the stoning also. He went through a stage of laying around in his not changed very often under-drawers on the couch with his only exercise the movement of his thumb on the remote control. Occasionally the only sound emitting from his presence was one I can't talk about and the question "Mom can you bring me a coke?" I began to have nightmares of an elderly man {with me still his more elderly mother} still laying on my couch gathering dust in a pair of Depends undergarments stuffing his empty coke can under the sofa when he was through with it so that he didn't have to get up and walk 10 feet to the nearest trash can! Thank goodness he grew out of that phase. I was beginning to think that there was going to be a shallow grave in the back yard and it wasn't going to be me! I use to love it when school was out every year and we could look forward to a long fun summer with the kids. I never dreaded school being let out however I am sure that I was the original model for the Staples commercial o the parents skipping down the aisles singing while they are buying school supplies! I remember setting up the pool on the back patio in Louisiana and filling the pool with water. Now the problem was that the water was really cold so I had it figured out that it took 27 large pots of HOT tap water to balance out the coolness of the hose water. So 27 times I would go from the kitchen sink through the 25 ft. long living room, across the foyer and through the 3rd bedroom which had a patio door, dump the water and return for more. I thought that I was being such a wonderful mother. My mother had a different philosophy about child raising. If it was trouble she didn't do it. Now I love my mother dearly but her favorite word was no. You could ask her ANYTHING and the answer would be no. "Mother can I breath?" "No you may not!" My father always has and always will say "Yes." You could say "Daddy, can we go out and play in the street and dodge in and out of speeding traffic?" Long silence, compassionate look on face, "Well I guess so honey but be really careful." As a result of this my sister and I spent a great deal of our Arkansas childhood sitting on the front porch waiting for the yes man to get home! Then bless his heart when we took off we left him having to deal with the no woman and us running amok all over the neighborhood or dodging in and out of traffic. I digress again {ADD+ dumb blond+no common sense will do that to you.} Anyway, one of the hardest things in life is letting go of your children when they set off on their own. We spend all their growing years in sacrifice, encouragement, teaching them to be independent grown-ups some day only to ball our eyes out when their gone. I can't even figure this out. One day I'm so happy that that our son is still at home and the next day I am considering putting an ad in a foreign country newspaper for a mail order groom! "Who's this a picture of mom?" " That's your new wife to be in Russia. I have your bags packed, new underwear {don't want to start out on the wrong foot with the new wife i mean that's the least i can do right.} "And by the way clean out those 38 cans of smashed coke bottles that you threw under the couch before you leave!"