London -- Almost Empty Nest and Quiet Chaos

Claire-Adele and I got back from London yesterday. I didn't really have time to blog while I was out of town as we were busy morning til night. In my spare downtime, I was doing puzzles from puzzle books I bought at Bletchley Park, a place I wished I could have worked at despite the frigid conditions in the winter and sweltering conditions in the summer. Bletchley Park was where Alan Turning and ten thousand people worked to crack the German's Enigma code making machine during World War II. A majority of the people who worked there were women. A related observation from my trip: All of the good British monarchs were women: Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II. Just sayin.

The estate that was bought by the British government that became Bletchley Park.

Where a high ranking official worked.

Where the women worked.

Where Alan Turning worked. Or maybe he had the other desk? Anyway, he worked in this room.

I think these are old, unrestored buildings used in the war.

So Claire-Adele and I took this trip before she leaves for college. Before I left, I told one of my friends at work that I was glad Claire-Adele and I were taking this trip as things are chaotic, but not chaotic.

Huh? was his response.

I finally figured it out. It is the quiet chaos, the chaos of an impending major change that doesn't come with drums beating or trauma, but the slowly evolving, impending in change. In Seattle, we have slow earthquakes, the kind where the energy of the shifting tectonic plates is expended slowly over months instead of minutes. The slow quakes still reflect movement without the violent upheaval, but the plates still move and things need to resettle. This is what it is like to have a kid leave for college. It slowly builds, one day at a time. And then she'll be gone.

On my last day of work before the trip, I went to lunch with two young women at my company. One is married, one has a boyfriend, neither have kids. They are both super nice and friendly and curious about my life. The unmarried one asked me lots of questions about my career and family and such. I didn't really get it. Why? Why do they want to hang out with me? I can't possibly imagine that my life--so different from theirs--could possibly be interesting to them. I'm almost an empty-nester and they are young, before kids. What could we have in common?

Perhaps the reason they find me interesting is precisely because we have nothing in common--today. Twenty years ago, I was them. I was part of a dual-income, no kids couple, working, going to graduate school, and fine tuning my career. They listened to me carp about my husband and kids. They listened to me complain about leaving my career to have kids. Then they listened to me talk about my posh upcoming to trip London with my daughter.

Oy.

I didn't want to listen to me. I found myself insufferable. I told them the only thing I didn't majorly screw up in my life, the only thing I did well, was managing money. Not that I screwed up my marriage and kids, but those were far more complex or complicated than I ever could have imagined they would be when I was twenty-eight, give or take a few years. Ask me how to pay off credit card debt and invest in mutual funds, but don't ask me the secret to staying married or being a good parent.

But they didn't mind listening to me. They were sincerely curious. Why?

I think I figured it out. Perhaps they wanted to look into a crystal ball and see what is on the other side, see what the next twenty years hold in store, when they cross the family finish line and launch a kid off to college.

Or worse, did they want to see where I screwed up, see the decisions I regretted, the things I would have done differently? I can't imagine these two women are that dark and cynical, but rather maybe they wanted to learn from me where not to fall. I have to admit when I was that age, I was too stubborn to think I could have learned something from a professional woman twenty years older than me. But then when I was in my twenties, middle-aged women slogging away at the firm where I worked were as rare as hen's teeth. Not that they didn't exist, but they were in a small minority.

On the plane to London I watched the movie Blockers. When I saw the trailer, I thought it looked cringe-worthy, as my kids would say. A group of middle-age parents (Leslie Mann and John Cena) and try to block their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night. Leslie Mann is married to Judd Apatow, and the trailer to this movie has more gross-out humor than The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Who was their target audience? I couldn't imagine teenage boys finding this set-up interesting at all.

"What you going to do with the back nine of your life?" one of the dads asked to Leslie Mann. The back nine. The two women I met were just getting to the golf course. Maybe they were still on the driving range. I still have the Boy, so I am not on the back nine yet, but I can see it in the distance.

This movie got me more than Lady Bird, which is saying a lot. The real idea is parents fighting the fact their kids are going to leave them. I laughed. I cried. It was not better than Hamilton,* but the movie was still thought-provoking even though it was pretty gross.

Instead of being a loon stalking my daughter's prom, I was taking her on a trip. I might not have been a perfect parent, but I was making an investment in my future relationship with my daughter. Only once or twice on the trip did I think, "I'll be glad when she's gone." But my main feeling when I came back was Claire-Adele is a good traveling companion and we should do this again. When the guys at work asked about my vacation, I said maybe when Claire-Adele is in college I can meet her some place for a weekend, like...

"Paris?" said one of my co-workers.

I was thinking New York, but that was the general idea.


* Nothing is better than Ham.