Who knew?
During all those years of raising babies and toddlers and school kids, those who had gone before us warned how important it was to maintain our own interests as women, to avoid the dreaded "Empty Nest Syndrome", when mothers of adult children feel loss of purpose when their children leave home and establish independent lives of their own.
So we who spent the 1980s pregnant and breastfeeding, the 1990s supervising homework and coordinating the after school run and the 2000s aticipating an impending empty nest ... are a little shell-shocked to realise OUR babies aren't leaving home!
Don't get me wrong - I LOVE my young adult kids and it is fantastic that we must have made all the right parenting choices after all, because they like us so much as people that they have NO NEED TO ESCAPE!
Its just, houses like ours - built in the mid 70s - were never intended to house five adults! Let alone their friends, electronic life essentials, cars etc. Far from wondering what to do with all this empty space, we face the challenge of sharing a lot of unempty space. Instead of downsizing, we find ourselves resizing.
Once again, I feel the Baby Boomers in the background laughing at us ... except THEY are all too busy being Grey Nomads and SKI Club members!
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