Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving week! For those not in America, please excuse us while we eat our feelings for a few days. This article was originally submitted to Grown & Flown.
If you’re dreaming of sugar plums and also the parent of a baby adult, then let this serve as a warning: The holidays will change on a dime.
One moment, your children are flying down the stairs at the crack of dawn to see the glorious gifts things that Santa delivered, and, the next, you are begging them to climb out of bed and join you for a fifth cup of coffee while practical gifts sit waiting to be unwrapped.
It seems unfair that there is no heads-up before a child who once thrived within the magic of the holidays suddenly wants very little to do with them. It seems unfair that no hints are offered as to when those sugar plums will be retired, replaced with a bored shrug.
This year, as we prepare to pick up both of our children from college for the long holiday break, I can’t help but reflect on the retreat of that Christmas innocence. Our children are three years apart. I still remember the exact moment that our eldest lost some of that Christmas spirit. I remember quietly panicking lest her deflated gloom trickle down to her younger brother. It was as if, as she stepped into a living room laden with gifts, she was slapped with the realization that there would be no surprises and that each of those gifts was wrapped by parents rather than elves.
I swear I heard the thud as her heart dropped.
A few years later, it happened again as our youngest felt that same thud. A third thud followed as I realized that the holidays had just changed forever.
It seemed unfair that there was no warning as I watched the magic drift away. Presents were opened with less enthusiasm. Smiles were somewhat forced as gifts no longer reached excessive but, instead, landed in the land of “practical.” Though we had followed Christmas lists to a tee, there still seemed to be a cloud of “So…that’s it?” floating through the house.
Yes, sweet child, that’s it. Yes, you have just reached an unwelcome benchmark on the path to adulthood. Yes, it does seem unfair that it arrived with no warning.
As we prepare to pick up both of our children from college in a few weeks, we are bracing for yet another shift in the holiday dynamics. This will be our first year with both returning home after months of living hours away from our carefully structured nest. On a very basic level, this means that my husband and I will likely be deemed the least intelligent of our home’s population. College, after all, is meant for discovering just how little one’s parents actually know.
We are preparing to serve more as a holiday hotel than a desperately missed home. We know that our children will be scattered as they catch up with friends, sharing stories that we will never hear.
We will offer reminders that, yes, we still need you home by midnight because, yes, this home is shared with people who have not been mastering the all-nighter for months. Yes, we would like to know if we are cooking dinner for two, three, four, or more. And, yes, you do still need to hang up your wet towels rather than toss them in a random corner.
We are prepared for the pushback and offers for compromise and perhaps the occasional, “I’m an adult now.”
Yes, of course you are…on paper. Still, lots to learn. Can we just slow down a bit?
Our eldest has already shared plans for a split holiday break–half spent here, and half spent across the country visiting a friend. I suppose a few years ago, we would have pushed back, insisting that this was our time. This year, not so much. As she rounds the corner to graduation, we know that her path is now just that–hers.
This was our job, right? To teach our children to fly? She is flying. It wouldn’t be right to clip those wings because, well, we miss her.
In the blink of an eye, two bedrooms in our home will sit mostly empty. Not just during the holiday season but permanently as apartments welcome childhood belongings and all of those practical Christmas gifts–gifts that will make much more sense in the coming years than they will just a few weeks from now.
It seems so unfair that there was no heads-up.
It seems so unfair that, as our children said goodbye to those sugar plums, time seemed to speed up exponentially as if the most practical gift under the tree was a teleport to adulthood.
Practical? Not for me.
But they know they can always come home to the nest and that is a beautiful thing!
I miss my birdies as well. Even though one is close (and married), the tug between home and the in laws for the holidays can produce undesired angst so I try to recognize this and internalize my feelings. I have been fortunate enough to have “my boys” (age 35 & 28) for every Christmas, but I know the day will come when their independence and lives will keep them away. I am ready for it, I can handle it 🥴.
Thank you Jyl for speaking out loud the things many may suppress.