When I saw my daughter’s car in our driveway I wanted to run the other way — away from my peaceful home, our empty nest that was about to be invaded.
Instead, I braced for her entrance. Rachel, 32, the oldest of Julia’s and my three children, had moved out long ago, like her two brothers. But hours earlier, she had broke off her engagement with her boyfriend of two years. Now, here she was with a car full of boxes stuffed with books, kitchenware, potted plants and suitcases.
She walked in to the kitchen, erupting into sobs. I wrapped my arms around her, unsure how else to console her. I wanted to say that everything would be okay, but knew from past stumbles she would cry harder, as if to ask how I could be so clueless. Didn’t I get what she was going through? I stood quietly, holding her, as she cried on.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said.
She cried some more, like when she was a little kid, longer than I expected, long enough that I felt my patience being tested.
“Can you help empty my car?” she finally asked.
“Sure,” I said, in my most comforting voice, relieved, though dying to learn what the hell had happened. But I knew she would tell Julia and me soon enough, so I kept my mouth shut. Rachel opened the back of her Subaru station wagon. My eyes bulged, stunned at how much stuff she’d crammed in.
This is going to kill my back, I thought as she pulled boxes out, dropping them haphazardly in the middle of the driveway, on the lawn, anywhere. I lifted a suitcase out. It was so heavy; did she stuff it with kettle bells?
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring them up to my room,” she said matter-of-factly, surveying the mounds of accumulations.
When? I thought sarcastically. I know my daughter. If I didn’t bring them in, all this stuff would languish outside for days. What if it rains tonight? Has she thought of that? But another voice reminded me that my job was to welcome her home with an open heart, without judgment, no matter what the circumstances.
I worried it was too late for that. Resentment was already filtering down my gut: My daughter was moving back with no checkout date on the calendar. Over the past several years since our youngest moved out, I’d grown to relish being an empty nester. Life was simpler, a new brand of fun with just Julia and me.
Not that we didn’t love our kids, their visits, or ours to wherever they were calling home. We did. We just also believed that at a certain age, our kids needed to grow up and move out, no matter how much we’d cherished our years all together under one roof.
* * *
Like her brothers, Rachel always appreciated my humor. “Don’t egg him on,” Julia would say, annoyed when I got going with my shtick, riffing on everyday incidents. We watched reruns of “Seinfeld” together, and Rachel and I loved playing with words. She laughed and laughed once when I pointed out that the word “ridiculous” ought to be “redunkulis.”
“Now that’s ridiculous,” I improvised.
And we shared the emotions a good out-loud read can deliver. “Are you crying or laughing?” she asked once when I could barely finish reading a poignant newspaper column to her.
“Both,” I laughed, wiping tears from my eyes.
I also tried to impress on my kids the sacred moments in everyday life. After too much partying in the dorms her freshman year of college, Rachel lived alone off campus the next year, a growing experience though a lonely one. That spring, I flew out to help her move out of her apartment. Before we drove off, I told her to go back into the empty apartment one last time.
“Spend a few minutes. Reflect on what you’ve learned. What it’s been like. Go room to room.
Take your time,” I said. “Then we’ll leave.”
She returned a few minutes later, teary-eyed and grateful for the ritual.
Rachel’s move home felt like one step backwards, compounded by how her healing process rubbed me. She lived not only out of her old bedroom her first month home, but also her brother’s, because she wouldn’t sleep in her bed, which she and her now-ex-fiancé, Noah, had slept in when they’d stay over.
At night, she burned Palo Santo incense sticks to help “purify the energy.” The scent seeped into the hall, annoying me as I passed her closed door, feeling like the vanguard of Burning Man had moved into the neighborhood.
Rachel sought out all kinds of healers to help her process the breakup and her future. She saw a life coach, a shaman, a psychic, a tarot-card reader and an astrologist. She did somatic experiencing and neuro-feedback.
Through high school and even in college, Rachel never dated; instead she clung to the safety of a group of friends. After college, she tried online-dating services like OkCupid and JDate, but none of those encounters jelled. When I heard she was seeing Noah, a guy she’d known since middle school, I was surprised. I hardly knew him, but hadn’t she dismissed him as too flaky? Was she settling too easily?
A year after their first date, they moved in together. I had to admit they seemed great together. They got each other’s idiosyncrasies. He was kind to her, and to Julia and me. He was charming, passionate about his work, and often told me about cool innovations, foods or social movements he’d read about. But he didn’t want kids.
* * *
Rachel and I were hiking our favorite trail, past stands of red maples, oaks and hickories, a glistening reservoir to our left, a blue sky above. Mostly she talked; I commented. Big topics: their career plans, where they would live, finances, if and when they might get a dog.
“What about when you have kids?” I asked at a moment when the question felt relevant.
“Noah doesn’t want them,” she said, like it was a closed case, a tone that surprised me.
“Whoa! Really?” I asked, stunned.
“Well,” she said pausing, without a trace of regret in her voice, “if it means not being with Noah, well, I guess it’s no kids,” she said. I felt sadness rubbing against my heart. Was she so willing to give up that desire? It didn’t compute. She loved playing with kids, had always talked about one day having them.
I let it go as we hiked on, but later I felt regret. I’m at that age when friends are having grandchildren. “There’s nothing like it,” they say, brimming. When I think about it, I get this image of lifting a little one onto my lap, reading a picture book together, feeling the warmth of a snuggle. I imagine I’d be a great grandfather.
But it was out of my control, I told myself. So what if my vision failed to mesh with her reality. Life takes twists and turns. Hadn’t I disappointed my father by not going into the family business he so wanted me to join? She had to make her own decisions.
More importantly, Rachel looked happy. We’d meet them for dinner, have them over. Noah would stop by if he was in the neighborhood. We’d hug hellos and goodbyes. He came for Thanksgiving along with his parents. And when we took a big family vacation with our three kids, including our middle son’s fiancée, we invited Noah to join us. He was becoming part of the family.
Then he surprised us, and Rachel, by proposing to her during that vacation on the beach — swept away, I thought, with all the love our family imbued. When he made the announcement that night over drinks, everyone leapt out of their chairs and hugged. Except me. I couldn’t get out of my low-slung beach chair, as if a gravitational truth was holding me down. No one noticed by the time I managed to stand, toast and hug the newly-engaged couple. Nine months later, they nailed down venue details for a wedding a year off, but they didn’t sign a contract.
Then one early weekday morning, after getting my blood drawn for a routine cholesterol screening, I climbed up the stairs to check on Julia, sitting in bed, reading the paper, drinking her coffee, and waiting for me.
“Sit down,” she said. “Rachel just called.” Those were ominous words, I thought. What was wrong? Rachel never called this early. Had their apartment been broken into? I had no idea, but I felt dread.
“She and Noah broke up,” Julia said, a stunner I had not seen coming. “She’s packing her stuff and coming home.”
“What! Are you kidding me?”
Over the next few days and weeks, Rachel leaked information about what happened. Yes, they often were the happy couple they looked like, but each had deep concerns too painful to admit to one another. Until they finally felt compelled to share them, forcing the realization that they weren’t meant for each other. It had been bubbling, she told us. That morning of the breakup had started early. Neither of them could sleep. So they got up and started talking and talking in the morning darkness. By daybreak, it had hit them both. They weren’t getting married. She returned his engagement ring, and over the course of several hours, moved out of their apartment and returned home.
I knew I needed to act the role of a father whose daughter has undergone loss, but my default position was too farsighted. All I saw was her move encroaching on my empty-nester life.
I loved my new relationship with the woman I married thirty-five years earlier, now without the demands of raising kids. We would get dinner out; catch a movie or play, knowing our children could handle the challenges of growing into adulthood. We talked openly about how we felt, without being on guard. And with no kids in the bedrooms next door, we didn’t have to be discreet about our own amorous adventures.
It took months to get over my resentment of Rachel’s move home — until one night when I noticed the hard-edged feeling softening when she arrived home after a few days away. When work required her to be out of town, she would stay with friends. Earlier that day, she texted us to say she would be home for dinner. I felt delight, like company dropping by, as I rushed to whip up a meal I knew she would love. More than that, I looked forward to catching up on her insights. And that’s when I got that this was her way of moving forward: talking with friends on the phone for hours, her New Age therapies, even the mindfulness-meditation course she was taking. Far from moping or feeling victimized about the circumstances she was dealt, she was handling them.
To my relief, she moved her boxes, suitcases and plants out of the dining room, hallway, mudroom and kitchen and into her room and the attic, though I still bumped into signs of the breakup now and then. Up in the attic, her unworn wedding dress, zipped in a garment bag, hung like unclaimed luggage. She had bought it at a sample sale, too good to pass up. Another time, I happened on a Shutterfly picture-book our kids had made of that big family vacation. It included photos of the then-newly engaged couple.
Eventually, she made a plan with a move-out date, still several months away. And we gradually found ourselves cultivating a nourishing routine. Rachel would arrive home, join us in our basement den, where Julia and I were catching up on recorded television shows. We’d hit pause, and an hour would go by as we talked. Or I’d be up in the kitchen, chopping vegetables or grilling chicken. Rachel would come in and join me for a glass of wine as she shared reflections or thoughts about life. By then, months into life with our adult daughter, I finally hit my stride with my current role: to be there for her, to listen to the inevitable plot-twists of her life, challenges and triumphs; in short, to continue to love her unconditionally. I did so the way it came naturally as in times past: playing music cuts I thought she’d like, sharing great reads with her, passing on emails I knew would touch her.
As head family cook, I made sure plenty of meals were at the ready for my gluten-free daughter. But mostly, I grew to appreciate her time at home, knowing she’d be gone before we knew it.