It feels different this year, even though it is not all that different than other years. Katie graduated from UW Madison on May 16^th. Shannon graduated from North Central College on June 13^th. We had an open house gathering of family and friends Jun14th and later that evening, Shannon, with her little red Honda Accord loaded up with all things necessary and reasonable, drove East, her father and I at the end of the driveway bent over at the waist watching her tail lights fade away. She intended to drive straight through to Stamford, Connecticut where her big brother (my stepson) and sister-in-law reside, with the goal of being on time for her 5 o’clock graduate school class Monday evening at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. She was armed with information from a dear friend of her father’s who is a truck driver and grew up in Stamford and very familiar with the route so he was able to provide a list of the best places to stop and rest etc. I tried to keep my fear in check with prayer and frequent phone calls throughout the night. She did well, arrived safely and with an hour or so to nap before going to class.

The girls are 16 months apart. They graduated from college the same year because Katie studied abroad her junior year and then entered the two year School of Ed program. These last five years of college have had a certain in-between quality to them. They still leaned on us in many ways. I helped to edit and revise many papers. We continued to carry them on our health insurance plan. We talked them through times of fear and emotional distress. During the first couple of years I still made doctors’ and dentists’ appointments for them. I did their taxes and financial aid forms. They came home for visits with loads of laundry. Their blossoming maturity crept in and filled up spaces we unknowingly left open: grabbing a broom and mop and doing the kitchen floor, stopping for groceries on the way home and fixing a meal for the family, paying for things that we did together, offering their own insight as we were wrestling with issues, anticipating our needs and comforts. Yet their bedrooms remained here for them in my mind – they were away at college but not really having left home. We were, as their parents, not really done yet.

The fact is that Katie stayed in Madison and worked every summer but one. That was the summer before she went to Ecuador. She came home to be free of the financial constraints of paying rent and to have an emotional safety net while she prepared to leave the country for months. That summer I made over Joe’s room upstairs (the smallest of our bedrooms), painting the paneled wainscoting white and the walls blue, as well as rummage sale finds in various shades of the same, providing a book case, night table and desk and I moved Joe into the basement bedroom that had been Katie’s through high school and her big brother Brian’s before her. The room looks cute in the way that I would have liked for her to have had in junior high and high school years but never got around to. Once she left for Ecuador, I began using it for the purpose of managing all the household paperwork and bill paying which I never seem to get completely picked up before she comes home. Katie has had no complaint about that as long as she has a bed to sleep in. Madison is really where she lives and has her mail delivered. I’ve known that, but I haven’t really let it be so.

Shannon’s room, now that is a different story. Her senior year in high school, I managed to get it converted from the grade school wallpaper and décor that originated when she and Katie shared the room to a more sophisticated and serene palette of green, buttery beige and deep red rose accents. Shannon did the flip side of Katie: she returned home every summer but one, her residence at school being the temporary one. Each summer and Christmas break she filled the room and a good portion of the garage with the boxes and suitcases full of her seasonal wardrobes and dorm-life household items, never completely unpacking but pretty much fully in residence when here. Until last year, the assumed plan was that she would live at home again after college and go to graduate school in Milwaukee.

Until last year, I thought that I would grow old in this house. I must amend that because for many years we (my husband and I) sort of planned that once the kids were grown and out of the house that we would move to the north woods of Wisconsin, hopefully near a lake, but in recent years the effects of my fibromyalgia created such a sedated pace in my lifestyle that I could find no mental energy for the idea of uprooting and relocating. I grew accustomed to the idea of growing old in this house, of having our various upgrades and remodels become dated in the way that Grandparents’ homes often are. One April day, I found myself out in the back yard gathering up sticks as kindling for the woodstove we use in the basement and fantasizing about the company of several grandchildren out there with me having a contest over who could gather the biggest pile of sticks. And when we returned to the warmth of the house, Grandma (me) would make tea in one of the pretty teapots from her collection and everyone would get to drink tea from a real china cup and saucer.

Last summer that came into question in a way that shocked and startled us all. I won’t take up space to try and delineate that here – it is what it is, for now we still live here. The upshot is that Shannon began to contemplate different horizons and eventually found herself considering a school in Connecticut which offered the Masters in Family Therapy that she wanted to pursue and the opportunity to take a big leap out of the comfort zone, while at the same time being able to live near or with her big brother, grew more attractive.

So this summer is different in that neither of my daughters lives here anymore. I didn’t expect that to happen so abruptly. In a recent phone conversation with Shannon when I told her that it felt so strange not to have her here, she responded that it’s really not all that different than other years when the summers began with her being back at campus in Illinois for cheerleading camp. No, I said, it is different. Her stuff is not here. Her room stays relatively neat like a guest room; even though there are still some boxes lining one wall of the garage, her presence is not here. There is no make-up in the bathroom, there is no sense of her returning in a week’s time. She has begun her adult life now. I experience this, not in a morose way, but with that little catch in the chest that is a mix of pride and a mother letting go.

A couple of weeks ago, with several items to be ironed, I carried the ironing board up from the basement laundry room and set it up in Shannon’s bedroom. In the southwest corner, it has a soft bright light. I felt that I could iron more happily there. I intended to complete my ironing in one day and take it down again. It is still standing. Ironing is always a work in progress. The shock to me is that, like Katie’s room became my office, the ironing board in her room signifies that I, on some level, have realized that Shannon too has come into her own and the household will find some other uses for her space. She and Katie are both creating and living their adult lives. They are no longer our dependent children.

There is that saying: “Bring the body, the mind will follow.” Setting up the ironing board was the physical evidence of what my mind had not yet fully acknowledged until this writing.

Godspeed my dear little Katie Girl!

Godspeed my sweet little Shannon Girl!