I follow a blog called thistlewoodfarms.com written by a wonderfully entertaining woman, Karianne, who blogs about her family and decorating her family home in the rural countryside. There are many things about her blog that draw me in but it began with the photography of her mostly white decor with “pops” of color. I love the super clean look of her rooms and along with her photography, she blogs about her life.

In a recent blog entitled “Vintage Navy and White and Red Bedroom Reveal”  she writes about redecorating her sons’ bedroom, but it is actually more about her feelings of her son leaving the nest. She wrote:

I am literally a mess this week.

Everything makes me cry.

Every. Single. Thing.

I’m crying at commercials. And songs. And sidewalks. And puppies.

And rooms that I just finished.

Rivers and rivers of happy, poignant, wistful tears.

The reason this quote struck me so strongly is that I went through the exact same thing just a couple weeks ago. Everything made me cry. I cried at photographs, I cried when no one was around and even more embarrassing, I cried at work while talking to my boss. You would have thought I had sustained an incredible personal loss, when in fact, it was only my 30 year old son, his wife and my grandson,  moving from across the street to a neighboring town twenty miles away. You would have thought the way I was feeling they were one of these strange (to me) young couples you see on House Hunters International who decide to pick up and move thousands of miles away from their families but have to have a home big enough to entertain family and friends. I don’t know about you, but there really isn’t much money in my budget to be travelling thousands of miles to visit very often. But, I digress (as usual). All my chickens are close. One child still lives across the street (she and my son shared a duplex), one lives about five miles away and another lives about two miles away. The one two miles away made me an empty nester. He’s my youngest and he’s only been gone about eight months, so there’s that too. After forty plus years of living with children, it’s odd, but sorta nice. My husband can now walk around in his underwear. (Odd, but not sorta nice, lol).

I’ve always lived in the town I was born in; went all eight years to the same grade school and all four years to the same high school. I am very grounded in this community, but my son argued that the school district where we live is not as good as the school district in the town to which he moved; that one is #2 in the state. But still, my grandson is only eighteen months old! There was plenty of time to find a house, not now while he’s so cute! I’ve only now gotten over the fact that he doesn’t want to cuddle anymore. He’d rather push his little red chair up to the coffee table, climb up and giggling, jump on me from the table. Oh my, how I love that little red-headed guy…and now, to quote Star Wars or one of those  shows I never watched…he’s in a galaxy far, far away.

It’s all over now. They’ve completely moved, the duplex is clean and ready for the next tenant and they are nestled in their dream home in the town far, far away. I’ve stopped crying, but I haven’t stopped missing that little boy.

Incidentally, in the photos above, my grandson was feeding my four-legged children with a fork. I thought it was so cute so I sent the photos to my son only to be told “Mom, he gets in trouble for feeding the dogs at home”. Live and learn! And, yes, that really is a 100 pound lap dog.