The Final Year

By Stephanie Seidl, MA, LCPC

The house has been wound down for the night. The coffee pot is set, the dishwasher hums, and the dryer swirls. All these sounds bring me comfort and move me to a state of reflection. I am instantly reminded of the years of small children and the quiet after they were put to bed for the evening.

At this time each year, I would anticipate the upcoming start of school. Each of my children would be off to a new year. We would take the obligatory picture by our front door then load in the mini-van for drop off (I will never, ever miss the drop off lines!).

Our mini van has been gone for five years now. In those five years, the obligatory first day picture has dwindled from three to two and now one. Our youngest begins his senior year this week. A year I have come to frame as a “year of lasts.” Last marching band season, last band concerts, last Tae Kwon Do classes. The list goes on.

A transition is upon us. A rather large transition which has arrived much more quickly than I could have ever anticipated. Many dream of the time that empty nest looms in the future.

Yet this isn’t a transition that just happened as our last child starts his senior year. This is a transition that has been taking place for many years. The process of moving from more of a director to a coach in our children’s lives is a normal and healthy process. However, our emotions regarding this transition are valid.

◆

Transitions aren’t always easy, even the good ones. Even the ones we saw coming from a mile away, the ones we would have told you, years ago, that we were ready for. There’s a difference between knowing a season is ending and actually living through the ending of it. I know this is right. I know this is how it’s supposed to go. And I still feel the weight of it some nights, standing in a kitchen that’s a little too clean and a little too quiet. Both things are true at once, and I’ve had to give myself permission to let them be true at the same time — the excitement for him and the ache for me. Emotions in a season like this don’t need to be resolved or explained away. They just need to be allowed.

What I’m learning is that almost any transition, no matter its size, has a way of reaching into your sense of identity and asking a question you weren’t necessarily prepared to answer. For eighteen years, so much of who we have been has been organized around being needed in a very specific, very physical way — the one who signed permission slips, drove to practice, sat in the bleachers, packed the lunches, ran the household like a small operation with a full calendar and no days off. That role is winding down. And when a role that large winds down, it’s fair to ask: who am I when I’m not needed in that particular way anymore? That question feels bigger, and a little scarier, than simple sadness. But I’ve come to believe it’s also where the next chapter of me and us actually begins.

I think that’s part of what this season really is — less an ending, and more a change in job description. For most of their childhood, we were the directors. We set the schedule, made the calls, decided what the days would look like. Slowly, without our ever officially resigning the position, our roles have been shifting. Now we are more of coaches — people on the sideline, still invested, still showing up, but no longer running the plays. We don’t get to call the game anymore. We get to watch them call it, and step in only when they ask.

We raised them to leave. That was always the job.

And watching them do it well — watching them become people we’d want to know even if we hadn’t raised them — has made this transition feel less like loss and more like a handoff we’ve been training for all along.

In a little less than 36 hours, we will stand at the front door to take our last, first day of school photo. We’re ready!

Our first day of school ever on September 1, 2009.