Grandma's Pearls

Just another day

OK, so the last entry was about being needed and feeling very lonely after the kids have moved out. Today, I am glad that I still have one kid at home. He has been talking about going on a road trip with his friends this summer. I can't stop him from going, he is 19 now and very much grown. It's just that I'm not ready for an actual empty nest. I should be though. At least that is what I have been told by everyone who has had kids and they've moved out. Supposedly, it is a chance to start your life again and do what you want to do, not what you have to do. It is a chance to be greedy and keep things for yourself and not share with anyone. It is supposed to be a time to enjoy and rediscover who you are, but all I have ever been or done is take care of my kids. How do you not be that person anymore? My life has been my kids and my husband and sharing and enjoying them and playing with them and doing for and with them and helping them and teaching them. I don't know how to be greedy and not share, I don't know how to buy something for just me and not them too. It feels like I'm nothing anymore. I know that sounds crazy but that is how I feel. If I'm not the mom that makes cookies for school and cupcakes just because, who lays on the floor and colors with the kids and plays in the mud with them and lets them lick the bowl from the cupcakes clean, then Who Am I?
I have always had kids around me, since my first daughter was born and I was 17 years old at the time. I have been there for them, given them everything I could, ignored the housework that needed to be done sometimes, just to play barbie's with the girls and hotwheels with the boys. We would have tea parties and picnics in the house when it rained, we would build forts in the living room between the coffee table, couch and chair. We would play hide and seek, tag, chase, I spy, monopoly, cards(when they got older) and we would have dance contests and fashion shows. What am I going to do now that they are grown and moved away? They have taken my grandchildren with them, so that is out of the question and my husband isn't interested in the things that I am interested in, so, where do I go from here? Who am I now? What am I now? I can't get a job because I don't have the skills necessary to compete with someone less than half my age, unless I get a job at a day care and I'm not sure that would be a good idea. Your very limited on the discipline aspect and there is a lack of respect directed towards you because you aren't allowed to discipline the child that you are taking care of because it isn't yours. That would drive me crazy. This is driving me crazy. It is a constant thought in the back of my mind all the time and I don't have the answer to questions anyway. I guess that I will just have to wait and see, like the rest of the world has done at one time or another.