The Trouble with Weekends

I have hit an unexpected bump with the empty nest situation. Let me give some background info first.

The Boy is going to college only 60 miles from home. To make it a complete college experience (and to save my nerves with having him on the road less), we got him a dorm close to his school. He has his freedom. He can do the whole "living away from home" thing. And he's close so I feel a little less like the baby bird has migrated too far away.

However, The Boy has a Girl. She's a few months older than him, but still in high school. So, The Boy comes home every weekend, mostly to see The Girl. Now when he originally told me this plan, I had visions of the weekends being just like old times: him and his friends playing video games in the bedroom for hours on end; me fixing meals that they dish up and disappear back into the room with; when everyone goes home late at night The Boy trying to keep me up for another hour chattering my head off telling me all the details of the video game and occasionally throwing in a tidbit of something meaningful about him, his school, or his friends.

That's not how things are turning out. He and his friends are making plans away from home, concerts, movies, football games, dinner out. The Boy has spent most of each weekend not at home. He's focused on The Girl and his friends. Mom is hardly in this picture.

I know he is feeling his independence all week long. That was the plan with getting a dorm. That same independence is flooding into the weekends at home and causing conflict. I expected him home, where I could feel like things are all the same. He expected to do whatever he felt like without checking in, telling me the plans, or spending time with his dear ol' mother.

I'm having to learn to let go of the dreams I had of still being the mom of a child. The Boy and I have negotiated an understanding; he can spend most of his weekend with The Girl and his friends but will set aside one portion of one day to spend with me, a meal, a movie, something. It's still not easy. If the plans change a little I feel more lonely and sad than any other time throughout the week. I can handle week nights alone just fine, when I expect The Boy to be away doing his own thing. But when I expect him home, or I planned a meal he'd like, or things just aren't living up to what I envisioned, it's difficult. That's when I feel the empty nest, not so much when he is away, but when he is near but not my good teenaged boy he'd been for five or six years now. I have to remind myself every time I need to take a step back, let him have his growing-up time, and not try to make things be what they won't ever be again.