Image via Wikimedia Commons

I was tempted to post a cat picture today and call it good – maybe even do it for the whole month. See, the thing is, I am now officially an empty nester.

I spent a lot of the last six weeks getting my youngest to entrance exams and then helping her settle into her apartment just outside of Tokyo. I’m exhausted. Tokyo is a city for walkers. And for stairclimbers. And for uphill shufflers. It’s a regular Olympics for the pedestrian, and I participated in the triathlon (at least until I did a bit of orienteering, and learned to find the hidden elevators in the city).

I didn’t write. I barely even thought about writing, and for the last week, I didn’t even study kanji characters. (Commitment: 10 minutes a day. Reward: Much satisfaction.) And I played the ukulele once . . . in a crappy little music store in an outlet mall, about five kilometers (or miles, if it makes you feel more comfortable) away. I pretended I was going to buy an instrument, even though I have no room for another uke, just jonesing for a little strumming fix. Stealing sound and rhythm. They needed to change their strings, so I didn’t steal much.

By last Tuesday, though, things had settled down. The entrance ceremony was held on Monday, and so I was left in the apartment to my own lazy devices. We’d built IKEA Kallax monuments to books and makeup, and a clever shelf/hanging rack for over the washing machine. We’d hauled at least 10 tons (if you want metric, you can consider it 15 tonnes, if you like – I’m too tired to Google it, but it’s rhetorical metric, which doesn’t have an accurate counterpart in the real world, anyway) through the train and subway systems, and up to the third floor (no elevator, no magical portals, nor any sprouting wings).

Tuesday, I cracked open a book about self-publishing that I’ll talk about this month, and started making some plans to feather my empty nest with activity. I started thinking about two of my abandoned books, and idly toyed with how I could re-start them as projects. I thought about blogs and blogging. I thought about how much I loved short stories, and how I need to start sending them to magazines and let other people see them. And I began to dream about schedules – I have a dayjob from eight to four every day, but if I organize myself, surely I can find two hours each weekday for writing. Surely more on the weekends.

But for now, I’m awash in emotions. It’s really, really nice to have two daughters launched and on their own. (Oh, Mrs. Bennet, I can feel your foolish joy.) The reduction in laundry alone is a satisfying side-benefit. But on the other hand, it’s worrisome. Are they happy? Are they fine? There’s really very little I can do to contribute to their happiness at this point. Last month, it was enough to feed her some chicken, or drive her to the really far clothing store. This month, it’s out of my hands, and if things follow their natural course, it’ll never really be in my hands ever again.

It’s overwhelming to lose that role; maybe I can channel my over-abundance of helpfulness into other causes. Or maybe I can post cat pictures for the month of April, and get back into the swing of things in May. We’ll see.