A Ghost in the House

           Image by DreamersNight
 

We feel like we have a ghost living with us. OK, it's only been three weeks since we dropped our one-and-only child, Mia, off for her freshman year of college. But I still find myself quickly turning off my alarm clock in the morning so it doesn't wake her up, or expecting her to burst through the door talking to me loudly at full speed without noticing that I'm on a work call. I also find myself wondering whether she is going to like the dinner I'm fixing tonight (probably not).

My husband, Mark, watches out for her car when he's backing out of the driveway, forgetting it's not there, and has caught himself looking for her in her room. 

We both expect to be awakened in the middle of the night when she very loudly gets up to go to the bathroom. I hope she has learned to be quieter for her roommates.

In other words, the ghost of our daughter is still living with us. That idea of dropping off our kid at college and dancing around like we're free? Well, eventually. Just not immediately, as I would have thought. It's one of the lessons of being an empty nester that I've learned. 

I'm not a particularly sentimental type and I always strived to teach my daughter to be independent (which honestly seemed to make her cling to me even more). I'm happily married, work full time and am taking graduate classes. So I'm plenty busy and really didn't think becoming an empty nester would be an emotional time for me.

But I am wrong. Turns out I'm a human mom after all.

Feeling Mia's presence isn't bad, of course. But it does make me miss her more. I guess it's to be expected that after 18 years of being around someone on a daily basis, my brain's neural structures are not going to change overnight. I imagine this must be how a phantom limb feels. 

She's very much still here.



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