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Nonfiction

Valerie Ackroyd

Wind Beneath Her Wings

I always believed that "empty nest syndrome" only afflicted those mothers who had made mothering a full-time effort. Whose days had revolved around play groups and excursions to the park. Who had spent years ferrying their multiple offspring to sports events, dance lessons and had served on PTA committees and had been Brownie leaders. And who now looked at empty sewing tables and empty place settings and wondered what their life now meant.

Please don't get me wrong; I salute these women. I never considered myself a full-time mother. For eighteen of the past twenty-one years, I juggled single parenthood and career. Often in my exhaustion, I looked forward to the day that my offspring took off on her own life's journey and I could get back to focusing on my life again. But, as sometimes weeks go by without hearing my daughter's bubbly voice, asking for advice and help, I have felt a sort of creeping sadness which at first I could not identify. I wander around the apartment, projects of all sorts lying abandoned on my desk. I realize, quite ruefully, that I packed more "living" into my life three years ago than I do now. What is nagging at me? Our ever-helpful society tells me that it's probably menopause; and yet... and yet, my mind keeps slipping back to those three words, "empty nest syndrome" (E.N.S.). Could it be?

Apart from my early years of playing with dolls, I had never much thought of becoming a mother. I suppose I assumed that it would happen in the course of time, just as marriage would happen. For so many of us women born in the early 50s, life either happened or it didn't; it didn't seem as if we had much control over it. And, as I passed my mid-twenties and prospects for marriage began to look rather dim (one can only handle so many failed love affairs before one decides that one better cash in one's dowry and get on with other things), motherhood looked to be something else that I probably wouldn't experience. Which was fine by me. I focused on travel and flitting from job to job. Life, to paraphrase Hemingway, was a moveable feast and I kept my affairs as moveable as possible. Until, one day, the unthinkable happened. I found that I was pregnant and, although other choices were available to me, I knew that I would not only have the baby, but keep it. Those who have had the finger of God thump them squarely on the head will understand when I say that, from the moment that I saw that little circle of blue at the bottom of the test bottle, I knew my life would change completely and that it was meant for me to accept that change.

And how it changed! I realize now, all the while that I thought I was being stretched to the limit and wished for a little slack on that elastic band, what made the whole thing so worthwhile was when I would go home at night and Laurie would be there, waiting to tell me about her latest triumph or tragedy. When I would relate to her something exciting at work or read a favorite story with her and watch her eyes grow round with wonder. Knowing that she depended on me, was counting on me to be her mentor, her role model, I walked a little taller, hung in a little longer, sacrificed in a way that I never had before. To put it quite tritely, she gave me my "place"; for her I nested where I had not for so many years.

Having lost my own mother at sixteen, however, and remembering the terror of being suddenly thrust out into the world unprepared, I made it my goal not to keep her by my side as long as I could, but to encourage her to follow her dreams, however far they might take her. To challenge her to think for herself, to learn how to fend for herself, with me cheering her on from increasingly longer distances.

Currently, that means she spends most of the year in Scotland, while I live thousands of miles away in the Pacific Northwest. She is pursuing her dream of a career with horses while I struggle with a career that suddenly has lost its allure. Life is a little staler, it's lost a little of its wonder. Is it menopause? Is it mid-life crisis? Or is it, indeed, a form of E.N.S.? Truthfully, I don't know. But I DO think that it may be time that I "mothered" myself and gave myself a dose of my own good advice. And that is to hop to the edge of my nest and take a good, long look around at the valleys and peaks that lie around and ahead of me. What green field now attracts me? What dark valley needs to be faced and traversed? Toward what new heights can I now soar? And, once I have set my sights, stretched my wings and taken flight, I need to remember that mother eagles don't stop flying when the fledgling leaves the nest.