Emotions run amok during this time of year for me. My frustrations are high, as I listen to my kids fight their last summer break fights. Energy is low, as I try to get in the last pool days in to get my money’s worth from the pool passes and try to end summer on a high note. Patience is tested, as I gather the kids’ school supplies together and listen to complaints about why they have to reuse perfectly fine, slightly used markers and colored pencils. Sadness settles in, as I send my small humans back to school and fear the day when my kids will be too cool to kiss me goodbye in public. Confusion appears, as I questions whether I enjoy silence in my house or hate it because I could actually hear the thoughts in my head (it’s messy in there and plots are hatching). It’s a time of year that I feel victorious that I kept the kids alive and happy over the summer, but I’m mentally spent. To add to all that, this year presented even more challenges on the heart. My niece and nephew left for college, and as I experienced my own feelings as a Tita (aunt), I watch from a distance my sister’s process of letting go.
Nieces and nephews are fantastic; they are not your own kids, so they tend to behave a little better, plus you still get to reprimand them if they are out of line, and then you send them back to their own house when you’ve had enough. With all of those perks, I often like them more than my own kids. And these particular two are extra special because they are the gold standard cousins that my kids look up to. I use my niece and nephew as tools to encourage good behaviors or to shame my kids when they are acting like dumbasses, whichever works best that day. We love these kids, so to say goodbye was difficult for all of us.
I remember when my nephew was born. I was in grad school and already trying to use his birth as an excuse to get out of an exam, telling my professor that my sister needed me to be there (it did not work, and my sister would also never allow me in the room anyway). He was just perfect. He played a particularly interesting role in our family; he softened all of us. My parents and siblings started saying weird things like, “I love you”…not to each other of course, because eww, but to the baby. He grew up being really calm and collected, and we all thought something was wrong with him because none of us are like that. Turns out, he’s great and we’re the ones that have the issues. And then my niece was born, and she was a little hellion, and then I thought, okay she’s more like us, sorry for ya.
Shortly after Jamie and I got married, we offered to have my niece and nephew overnight with us. We had it all planned out like we were playing family; we were going to take them to a movie and have lots of popcorn and lemonade, play games at home, sleep late, all these great adventures for my then 6 and 4 year old kiddos. I recall the looks on my sister’s and brother-in-law’s faces when they dropped them off, a combination of hesitancy and “you’re fucked.” And before I could ask what those looks were about, they peaced out and left us with two well-rested, very energetic and excited children. But I was super good with kids, with those three times I babysat when I was in high school and the few episodes of “Jon and Kate Plus 8” I watched back in the day, so I was basically a pro and ready for this. First thing on the docket: movie theater. We got the kids in the car, and I noticed how much slower Jamie was driving. I asked him why he was driving like my mom, and then I remembered there was some valuable goods in the backseat. Just walking the kids from the parking garage to the theater was already eye-opening, and we held their hands tightly, clenched our butt cheeks anxiously, and gave dirty looks to all the people driving like assholes (watch it, 2 MPH over the acceptable speed limit, buddy!). What felt like five hours later, we got to the theater, bought them large popcorns and large pink lemonades per request, and settled in for “Madagascar 2.” Other than my niece sitting in my lap for the majority of the movie and my nephew having to go to the bathroom twice because of the large lemonade, I thought the movie went pretty smoothly. When we got to the car, both kids started complaining of stomach aches. What could have possibly bothered their stomaches, certainly not large buttery popcorn and large sugar liquid substance?!? I told them we’d be home soon and to hold it. Their complaints went from zero to ninety, and I was sure they’d be shitting in the car with how slowly Jamie was driving. We rushed them up to our condo, I sent them each to a separate bathroom as Jamie conveniently took the dog out. As I took a breath of relief that I got them on the toilets just in time, I hear my nephew call out, “Tita…I got poo on your wall. I farted while I was peeing and poo came out.” Fuck me, this guy just sharted on my wall. I go in there, and he’s sitting on the toilet with a smile on his face and said, “I also peed a little in my underwear.” Suddenly he wasn’t so cute anymore. I start cleaning the wall and he’s micromanaging me, telling me that I missed some poop on the scale. Then I hear a thump behind me, and there is my niece lying on the bathroom floor in the fetal position. She tells me she’s too scared to be by herself in the bathroom but she has to poop. I clean up my nephew, throw his clothes in the washing machine, get him in the tub and put my niece to the toilet next to him so she’s not alone. At this point, I’m wondering why Jamie chose to take the dog on the longest walk of her life while I’m left with two shitting children. My niece does her business, and I throw her in the tub too. By the time Jamie got back in, I had both children’s colons emptied, bodies bathed, and pajamas on. I thought, wow, he’s gonna be a great dad. Okay, that was just a slightly bump in the road, I was still super fun Tita, let the fun resume.
I colored with my niece while Jamie played PlayStation games with my nephew (so apparently I was watching three kids that night). After about an hour, I see my nephew dancing around while he’s holding the video game controller, and we tell him to go to the bathroom. He does not listen. Five minutes later, he throws the controller and runs to the bathroom and calls out to me, “Tita, I didn’t make it and I peed in my underwear again!” Ugh, more laundry! I tell him to leave the toilet seat up so that there are no more accidents the next time he has to rush to the bathroom. An hour later, he goes to the bathroom again and I hear, “Uh oh, Tita I left the seat open like you said and I accidentally dropped the towel in the toilet after I washed my hands!” What is happening to super fun day with Tita, and why was Jamie still playing video games? As I questioned my life choices, I asked myself if parenting is simply constant laundry all day everyday (and three years later, I found the answer was yes). All good, just another few bumps in the road, but we could still make this fun.
The boys continued to play video games and my niece and I started playing a game she made up, where she constantly changed the rules so that she could win. Well, I’m pretty competitive, so I’m not letting some kid beat me at anything. But with her wizardry at rule adjustments, she was convinced that she won. When I told her she did not win, she jumped up to hit me in the shoulder and said, “You’re a loser.” Nope, not having it. I put her in a time out that lasted forever because she wouldn’t stop crying. Now that I have kids, I realize she was just saying matter-of-factly that I lost the game and she won, but at the time, my non-kid-having brain thought she was calling me names. Oops. Don’t worry, karma got me later when I had my own kids and made timeouts completely ineffective. Essentially, I was the loser in the end.
I found myself counting the minutes until bedtime, telling myself that I could do this. The kids were too scared to sleep by themselves in the guest bedroom, so we let both of them sleep between us. We probably ended up falling asleep before them out of pure exhaustion (watching me take care of the kids must have been very tiring for Jamie). I thought the kids would be so tired because they stayed up late and had a fun-filled day, but at the ass crack of dawn, there they were in bed, staring at us inches away from our faces and willing us to wake up. When my sister and brother-in-law arrived to pick them up, they had their multiple-times-washed clothing packed up waiting for them, and I was shuffling them lovingly out the door. Then I downed my dose of birth control like it was the most delicious meal I ever ate.
In my mind, they’ll always be six and four, and yet here they are, leaving for college together at the same university. I took them out to dinner with my kids a week before they left to say goodbye. I pried into their personal lives like Titas do, and they gave me adequate answers, just enough to shut me up. My niece told me about her dorm and my nephew told me about his apartment, and I shared my college stories that they didn’t ask about but I told anyway. They managed not to roll their eyes too much. I said, “Let’s make some goals for this year. Set a goal for academics, social life, health and fitness, and family.” I told them not to miss too many classes and to keep their GPA’s at an acceptable level so they don’t lose their scholarships; try to join PSA (Philippine Student Association) to help make new friends; work out daily and get into a volleyball tournament or two, and I perhaps lectured too long about the importance of having fiber in their diets; and they planned to have Sunday dinner at his apartment where they would alternate cooking dinner, and then FaceTime their parents together. I threw in there that they should text me every now and then to say hi, maybe call their little cousins and check on them. I ended dinner with my final bit of advice, “One more thing…your mom is batshit crazy. There has never been a mom more up their kids’ asses than yours (not in a bad way, like a foot, but in a good way, like a colonoscopy). But she’s sad, really sad. She gave her career up for you guys, made raising you her full-time job, and she put her all into giving you guys every possible experience. Sure, she worked part-time through the years too just to keep her foot in the nursing door, but her main focus was on you. And now you are both leaving her. She may seem pissed, stressed, tearful at times, disheveled, overwhelmed, overbearing, but it is all rooted in deep sadness that her full-time focus on your daily lives is quickly coming to an end. So be nice, let her go easy. When you call her, don’t always make it all about you, ask her what she’s up to. Make sure she’s enjoying her new life too. Send her random pictures of you guys on the quad, and then ask her to send pictures of her and dad too.” Both kids seemed surprised but agreeable. And I know they’ll do it because my sister and brother-in-law raised good kids.
So now they’re gone, having the time of their lives, figuring the ins and outs of independence and responsibility, and I have a couple of pathetic empty-nesters on my hands. My sister said she peeked into their rooms the other night to check on them out of pure habit, only to see empty beds. For a sister who is typically dead inside, she’s sad for real. I offered to have her come to my house to either raise my kids or give her the lovely project of sanding and painting my trim and doors, but she for some strange reason declined both offers. But she may fill her time up with coming to her nieces’ and nephews’ games and activities, because who else will she yell at?
As a Tita, I get to sit and watch my niece and nephew navigate through life without interfering too much, reliving my college days vicariously through them, gently reminding them to enjoy every minute and not to take themselves too seriously. As a sister, I watch my sister navigate through her new chapter too, listen to her roller coaster of emotions, help distract her with my silly issues that seem small in comparison to what she’s going through. I’m learning and taking notes, as I always have. I took the same path she did and chose the stay-at-home-mom gig too. I devote all my time to keep the family afloat, just as she did. And as I watch her struggle to let her kids go, I promise her that they always come back to their parents, just like we did. These past few days, I have held my little ones tighter and tighter because one day this will be me and Jamie. One day, this time of year that has historically been filled with the emotional ups and downs that I listed at the start of this, will be the end of an era that I call, “How Badly Did I Fuck Up My Kids.” I’m gonna need a lot of tissues and a hobby when that day comes. I guess I’ll paint my trim and doors then, since my sister won’t do it.
If you are in the same boat as my sister and brother-in-law, you should probably drink (responsibly). If you have a friend going through this, you should probably have a drink with them. I’m sure my sister could use a hug…I mean, we don’t do that to each other, but if you know her, hug her. Keep your heads up, empty-nesters, your kids are bound to fuck up and they’ll need you, either for moral support or bail.
The Mundame 