A Little Preview of What It's Like to be an Empty Nester

Both of my kids are currently away— Harlow is at sleepaway camp for six weeks while Mazzy is on a three week teen tour in Europe. They are always away for part of the summer, so this is nothing new, but there is one big difference this summer— Mazzy has her phone. At first, I didn’t love that aspect of the trip (one of the biggest selling points of sleepaway camp is your kids being off their devices for an extended period of time), but obviously having a phone is good for safety reasons when your teen is traveling abroad. What I didn’t realize is that being in touch with her, while she is experiencing new things, would give me a more accurate window into the empty nester phase than previous summers, and it’s not quite as sad as I imagined.

You guys know me. I love my kids and would love to keep them little and by my side forever. If you gave me the option to freeze time, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would have done it in almost every phase of their childhood. But here I am, with a teenager just two years away from going to college, and although it’s gonna absolutely CRUSH me when she goes away for real, I have to say— being kept in the loop of what’s going on in Mazzy’s life and being able to weigh in at a distance is delightful.

Of course, it helps that Mazzy seems genuinely interested in sharing her trip with us. It’s a photography focused trip, so Mazzy set up a photo sharing app for our extended family (it’s called Photocircle, not sponsored!) and I get to wake up to Mazzy’s favorite photos from the previous day. Plus, we get real time pics of her adventures over text, commentary on all the places she is visiting, short videos of things she finds especially noteworthy, play by plays of the logistics, food pics, gossip and even some selfies. We still send random tiktoks and reels we think the other will find funny, we facetime when it matters and I get to end each day by sending an adorable good night photo of Frankie. After years of sending Mazzy off to camp and hoping we receive a letter or two (one sided, no real details), I guess I’m just really surprised that when she’s got a phone, she keeps us up to date, and seems genuinely interested in sharing with us everything she’s seeing and experiencing. It’s pretty awesome.

Obviously, the level of awesomeness has a lot to do with the fact that Mazzy is having an amazing time. If she were miserable and texting constantly about wanting to come home, I’m sure it would feel quite a bit different. Maybe I would even start to think that the constant communication was hindering her ability to connect with the other kids, but luckily that’s not what’s happening and I get the gift of knowing that even when my kid is far away, if given the choice, she likes keeping in close contact.

Yesterday morning, she texted me that they just arrived in Paris, and I asked if she remembers anything from our mother daughter trip back in 2017. She was in first grade at the time so her memory is pretty foggy but she said she remembered the night tour on the bus and the baguette fight in the Palais Royale. I asked what she was doing today and she said they were going on a tour of Monmartre. I went back to my old blog post about the trip and texted her a few different photos of our time in Montmartre.

Look for the flamingos, I told her. And the love wall. A few hours later, she sent this:

Then last night, she reminded me to watch the latest episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty so we could discuss, which I did, and then this morning, she got to wake up to my review. Stupid Jeremiah and his tiny ring! Poor Connie at the restaurant! “And he ordered the salmon…” she texted back. If you know, you know.

Anyway, since I know I am in a similar parenting phase to many of my readers (and many who are a few years behind but follow to see what’s ahead), I think most of us are terrified of reaching the dreaded empty nest phase. I’d like to take this opportunity to say, it’s gonna be okay, I think. We’ll get through it with family chat threads, facetime, social media and shared TV shows. There’s a lot more ways to keep close from a distance than we had with our parents when we all left home.