New Season of Life
Posted: August 6, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment
There was a lunch today at church, but since summer church is at 10 the lunch started at 11:15. As much as I wanted the fellowship Russ and I just could not handle lunch at that hour. Instead we went home and did a few chores and around 2:00 put Shay in the Morris Minor and went to Geer Street Garden to eat outside.
We arrived just as they were finishing brunch and turning over to lunch. Geer street is a dog friendly spot, for “well behaved dogs” as they say. Shay was in good company with a shepoo, tiny terrier, Akita and some dog of unknown origin. Russ and I brought the average age up quite a bit since most people there were still under 30.
There was one young couple with a little girl, who was in the very early days of just learning to walk. She teetered between the picnic benches and the dogs. Shay was more interested in sitting in Russ’ lap than playing with either the other dogs or the little girl.
Suddenly I had a flash back of Carter in a smocked dress with red sandals tip-toe running from table to table at a restaurant on a Sunday morning after church. How quickly the season of our life has changed from being the parent of the young child to being the old empty nest couple with their canine baby.
Since Carter is still working at camp Russ and I have fallen into our new empty nest pattern of doting on our dog as if she is our child. I am so thankful that we have Shay Shay, but can’t imagine how quickly the years have gone by. I see us having to cultivate a list of dog friendly restaurants for our future. I wish America was more like England in their acceptance of dogs inside restaurants. Perhaps Shay will have to train as a service dog. Yet something else to do in my current old age.
Less Dana, More Good 
Dana, I feel your pain. I went through empty nesting with the death of my parents and that was a double whammy. Here is how I coped with this. I learned new skills, hobbies and focused on the folks in my life that mattered. There were many outside my family and I embraced them and they wanted to be embraced. I also found something that I didn’t see in my husband that I embraced. We are even more of a team now.
Now that we have daughters and sons in law and another daughter in law soon to be, I have found other relationships.
The one thing that has really come to the surface is how much my girlfriends mean to mean. Embrace them with open arms as you have obviously done. I have alot of single friends and love them, Joel loves them as well. We recently lost a dear friend to ovarian cancer and she taught us to live every minute.
Dana. you will find your best self in the coming years. Let your daughter fly. Encourage and support her but realize this is your time.
KIM CRAIG