Postscript

Coffee and Tea

At the end of a celebratory meal, after the plates and cutlery have been whisked away, cups of steaming coffee and tea remain. The postmeal drink gives folks the chance to digest both the food and the events that brought them together. Guests linger, shoes off, any formality gone, just taking the time to tell stories and spend a few more minutes in one another’s company.

The house is quiet most days now; but if I listen closely, I can hear young voices and laughter. I catch shadows of Ben, Molly, and Sarah running through the rooms or sitting around the kitchen table. They are so much a part of the space that sometimes I still set places for five at dinner, forgetting that our young adults no longer live here.

Ben is in his third year at the University of Dayton, studying business and working with the athletic department at sporting events. He is a true Dayton Flyer, through and through, with a collection of UD T-shirts he would wear proudly every day if he could.

He’s long since gotten over his disappointment of not being accepted to Ohio State’s main campus, though he confided in me not too long ago that he would have had a tough time deciding between UD and OSU if he had been accepted. It’s hard to imagine him on the OSU campus, though, and how different his life would have been there.

Ben didn’t come home this past summer, instead taking a marketing internship with the Dayton Dragons, the Cincinnati Reds’ farm club. We knew it would happen eventually. It’s crucial for students to get internships in their field of choice to increase their job prospects. Still, it was unsettling for us to see him only a few weekends during the summer. At the same time, we were busy getting Molly and Sarah ready to leave for college, so we filled that emptiness with a whirl of activity.

Moving girls to college, we learned, was more complicated than moving a boy. Girls seem to have more stuff. And moving two girls to different colleges doubled the effort.

Molly chose to follow her brother—and parents, stepmother, and a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins—to the University of Dayton. At Ken’s suggestion, she took up engineering as her major.

“You just think like an engineer,” he told her one night at dinner, pointing out her meticulous methods for studying and her penchant for math and science. When she told us she was most excited about her calculus class after she’d been at college just a few weeks, we knew she was on the right track.

Sarah held on to the idea of dancing as a major until after her first round of auditions during the fall of her senior year. When they proved more brutal than she had anticipated, she regrouped and chose to focus on nursing instead. In the depth of her soul, Sarah is a caretaker. Watching her babysit or teach dance to young children convinced us that she needed to incorporate her giving nature into her career.

When we were arranging college visits her junior year, I suggested Loyola University in Chicago. It was one of the few schools that offered both nursing and dance. She lit up during that visit in a way she didn’t at any other school she saw, even her top dance choices. God has a way of working things out just as they should. Sarah is majoring in nursing with a dance minor at Loyola, the school where, I believe, she always belonged.

Of course, because of the girls’ interests, we knew long ago that they wouldn’t be attending the same school. None of the schools Molly applied to had nursing or dance; none of Sarah’s schools had engineering. So part of our challenge during the summer before their first semester was helping these twins say good-bye to each other. Molly and Sarah are very different, in looks and personality, but at the end of the day, they’re best friends, too. They’re now in the process of redefining that friendship while they live hundreds of miles apart in new, exciting, and quite separate worlds.

Now Ken and I are trying to establish adult—and separate—relationships with the children. I check in mostly via texts throughout the week, innocuous questions about what they’re eating and who they’re with. Ken does the same on his own schedule, asking about course work. We try to talk to the kids individually or together by phone or Skype at least once a week.

Ken and I are in a new world of our own, too. We have never been together without kids in our eight years of marriage, save a few nights here and there. I like to say we are in a reverse marriage, having our honeymoon after a decade together. Most couples at this stage are returning to what they had at the beginning of their marriage. We didn’t have a beginning. Just a middle.

Of course, it’s not really like a honeymoon, a true period of discovery. We had that in the midst of parenting. We’re now in more of an adjustment period, one that is particularly hard on Ken at times.

When Grace was dying, Ken promised her that he and the kids would be OK. He devoted his life to making it so. The first year Ben was gone to college and then the next year, the girls’ senior year, Ken struggled with the thought of their leaving. With all of his children gone, so was his life’s purpose.

But God calls each of us to keep moving forward. Ken’s sister, Kim, has a magnet in her office that I think of often. It says, “Faith doesn’t make life easy. Just possible.”

As solace for so much grief, Ken was given the gift of a new life partner, someone to hold his hand and wipe his tears and with whom to move to the next chapter, once the children were grown.

The children’s leaving was, in some ways, easier for me. I’d made big life-altering changes throughout my adult life: moving from coast-to-coast, changing careers, and changing jobs within those careers. It was, after all, one of those complete changes in direction that brought me to Ken, Ben, Molly, and Sarah.

But to say I eased into a childless life unscathed isn’t true. I may like that the house looks the same when I get up in the morning as when I went to bed the night before: no shoes in the doorway, no dishes on the counter or in the sink. And it’s easier to put a meal on the table for two than for five. But I’m conscious of the echoes of the empty house and the life that has left it. It’s quiet in a way that makes me wonder how I ever lived happily all alone.

Ken and I are redefining our own routines. We’re free to attend any Mass now, not having to wait for the kids to wake up. We usually go to earlier ones than we used to, avoiding the later and more crowded Masses filled with school-age children and families. We often drive to work together, and we can decide to grab a bite at a new restaurant on a whim without having to worry about what the kids will eat or who might need a car.

While parenting is never really over, we both have the sense that we’ve closed a chapter, completed this particular journey God set before us. Part of the comfort we can give each other is pointing out how well we handled this calling. Despite the challenges, which were often great, we managed to turn out three strong, faith-filled young adults who are now adapting well to their new lives. Ken and I can humbly say to each other with true humility, “Job well done.”

Mostly we’re just enjoying each other’s company, marveling in the blessings of having this life and love to share together.

At the orientation Mass at UD the day we left Molly to start her freshman year, the priest asked us to place our hands on the students we were about to leave behind and to repeat a prayer after him, with the last words being, “You are loved.”

As the moms and dads sniffled their good-byes before heading away, I realized that the words were for us, too. We are loved. By our families and by our children, yes. But loved also by God, who whispered into our hearts before we were born and continues to whisper throughout each chapter of our lives: “You are loved.”

And with that love, anything is possible.