A Nest is Always a Home

Every parent who's ever stood in a dorm room doorway knows this feeling: you spend eighteen years teaching a person to leave you, and then the day comes, and you are somehow still not ready. You struggle between being excited for what is to come and the overwhelming urge to drag your child back to the car and say this has all just been a big mistake.

My oldest son went to school 20 minutes away. I bawled hysterically in the car on the way home - the kind of crying where you're grateful for giant sunglasses so no one at the next red light sees you sobbing. My husband thought I was insane.

"You know you could drive back tomorrow and see him," he said.

I wouldn't. I couldn't. It wasn't the distance I was crying about - it was the stage of life we were entering. Was I crying because he was so close he might never really leave, or because he was gone enough that he'd never need a home-cooked meal again? I couldn't even tell which fear was mine. Turns out, neither one was real.

My middle son went to school 11 hours away. Despite having done this once already, I wasn't prepared for our goodbye. He'd always been my homebody - the one who wanted to eat dinner as a family even in high school, who never rushed to Friday night plans, who liked being where we were. So when he chose a school 11 hours from home, I didn't understand it, and I definitely wasn't ready for it. I never once stopped crying on the drive back. Twice my husband asked if we needed to pull over because he thought I was hyperventilating. But distance was no match for that boy's attachment to home - we joked that he came back for 11 days at a time, while his brother, 20 minutes away, popped in for 11 minutes. Distance, it turns out, has almost nothing to do with how close your kids stay.

Then came my baby girl. Two down, one to go.

We spent months decorating not one but two dorm rooms, because she did Penn State's summer program before starting in the fall, and far be it from this mama to send her off in August with a slightly used comforter. We searched Dormify, Bed Bath & Beyond, HomeGoods. But this kid was a rebel - things needed to be unique, not trendy. I was out of my style league. It was the year of the tapestry, and we bought so many on Etsy, intending to return the extras and never did, that I now have a lifetime supply of picnic blankets. (I have used exactly one of these - but I digress.)

Move-in one: I cried, same as I had with the boys. My nest would soon be empty, and the five-hour drive home felt strange and disconcerting. What would my days even look like once summer ended?

Move-in two was chaos - hot, sweaty, and by then she was already comfortable at school. She didn't want me emptying her bags, making neat piles in her closet, hanging pictures on the wall. She scrolled her phone, ignored my questions about which drawer was preferable for her sock collection, and asked my husband if he wanted to hit up a local spot where he could grab a beer instead of hooking up her TV and building a shelf. She wanted to go find her friends, and she let me know it, sharp enough that it caught me off guard coming from my own kid. My normally wonderful daughter had been replaced by a pod version of herself. When we finally pulled away, I'm not ashamed to say I told my husband to floor it.

I learned eventually that this was her way of soiling the nest. Because after that, we spoke every single day. She was just ready to fly.

All three of my kids came back home for stretches after college - some commuted before finding their own apartments, some moved home during COVID (my all-time favorite era, when they were all here with significant others and puppies in tow), some landed home between one place and the next. If you build strong relationships with your kids, you don't lose them. They love coming home. You will love having them. And you'll also learn to love your space - not empty, but full: full of you, and them, and memories, and goals, and plans, and dreams.

My house still has closets full of clothes they never bothered to take, even though their childhood bedrooms are now a nursery and a toddler's room for our grandkids. My 32-year-old son came by to swim this weekend and asked his dad for a pair of boxers. I told him to check his top drawer. He found his own.

A nest is always a home. And your birds always come back to it.

So let yourself cry it out at drop-off. It's scary - you're separating from your baby, from their childhood. But here's what I've learned, both from my own three and from hundreds of other families I've walked through this with: wash your face, read a book, pour a glass of wine, play mahjong, call a friend, go on a date with your spouse. Take some very deep breaths.

You'll need all of that new alone-time energy anyway - for the insane hours they'll keep once they're back, the kitchen that'll look like a tornado hit it after a 2am snack that somehow required a blender, and the piles of laundry they'll drag home never having quite located the dorm laundry room. Every bit of that mess will mean they came back. I'll take that any day.

The nest begins chirping again, ready or not. Let it.