S has been at school for three weeks. I miss him a lot, but I hadn’t actually cried since the night of drop-off. Then yesterday, I started tearing up at the supermarket when I spotted the Turkey Hill peach iced tea that I used to buy solely for him (no one else drinks it). Fortunately, I got hold of myself pretty quickly–unlike two years ago when my D left for college and I cried in front of the string cheese.
There are a couple of local events that I went to with youngest even in college, since she was in town. Now in grad school elsewhere and I’m sad looking at the calendar and realizing she won’t be here.
The college kid’s empty spot at the kitchen table. I made the rest of us change seats every meal so the empty spot was random and lost its meaning.
My family thought it was silly, but finding a solution that kept me from being sad every meal was worth it.
I prefer to have S#3 out of the house and was glad when he left for college…until about a week later when I had to mow the lawn–in August when it was 90some degrees/humid. I texted him a photo of me in action (my hand on the handle, lawn mower in front as if he were in my place) with the caption “Missing you.”
He got a laugh out of that.
My S’s nightly yell down the steps of “What’s for dinner?”
I have to peel my own potatoes now!
my kitty missing the kids and sleeping on their beds
Watching “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” with D. Our guilty pleasure! It’s just not the same without her.
My daughter is a long jumper and I teared up when vacuuming out the car at the copious amount of sand in the backseat.
agree also on the shows one doesn’t have to watch anymore!! But does anyway!
I no longer have an excuse to watch “Myth Busters” on TV. I have to watch on my own.
I no longer have an excuse to bake and/or buy cookies.
I am the only one left to mow the lawn.
Car, mudroom, his bedroom – all used to stink of cleats and sweaty uniforms. Now it all smells so darn clean . . .
Tide pods. They are a family meme now, thanks to my son, who famously texted pictures of pods caught in the washer door and asked how dissolved they had to be before he could declare the load clean. He always grabs a handful to take back to school when he comes home on break. And when he called earlier this week, it was to ask for my new Amazon Prime password so that he could order more, you guessed it, Tide pods.
I can’t open the drawer underneath the washer without laughing now.
IMO, nothing that makes you miss your child is silly. Sometimes bittersweet but not silly. I dream about my children, a lot. They’re almost alway little in the dreams. I wake up and feel sad.
When I went to his room and saw he left his “soffies” at home. He has taken them everywhere with him since he was a baby. Even when he went to camp as a counselor one was inside his pillow case. This is the first time he has ever left without them. I cried.
@momocarly Same here. His stuffed 18 year old Bear-Bear is sitting on a made bed. The bed wouldn’t normally be made unless I insisted and seeing the lonely tattered bear made me miss him.
When I walked into his room and realized that the body in his bed is now middle son, on a break from his college. S17 will still cuddle with me on the couch while watching some TV shows and middle boy hasn’t cuddled since K. I love having the older one home but I miss my huggy baby.
I love this thread.
Just seeing her piano sitting in the living room with the lid down without the big mess of music books and sheet music piled on either side of the built in music stand makes me miss her. It’s very quiet here without her musc.
Almost all of the above (except the tv shows, he rarely watched with us in high school). (For some reason, the start of his senior year (now) has almost been harder than when he first left 3 years ago. On some deep level, it seems that I am just now realizing that he’s never going to come here to live again. So some of these things are hitting me all over again.)
A big one for me was when he didn’t eat my second bagel half. Every morning I eat half a bagel, and leave the other half in a baggie for the next day. At some point in high school, he discovered this and started eating the leftover half as an after school snack. So every morning I’d have to start a new bagel. The first day I got up and saw the half waiting for me from the prior day, I just Boom! realized he was gone and got all wistful.