The future looks...childless

This last year or so I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life and where it is going; where I see my future.  I think it started with my daughter going to high school.  I can remember her as a toddler running around, her bare feet scrunched in the carpeting for traction, while the mothers in our play group worried about kindergarten.  I remembering scoffing at them and thinking how far away kindergarten was for my little Madison.  Then suddenly she was in eighth grade and we were choosing a high school, and I knew that college was just around the bend.  With children in your life time rotates around that clock at speed dial no matter how hard you try to slow it.  Darcy will be right on Madison's heels and just like that I will be out of a job. I watched my friend Robin go through it with her daughter.  We happened to end up staying at her house in Indiana the summer Kristen set off for Purdue.  I watched as Robin made trips to Target loading up on linens and bed sheets, her foyer stacked with boxes and all the odds and ends kids haul off to college.  I listened as my friend lamented about how fast the time flew by and we remembered together the little raven haired toddler who scrunched up her nose and blew out when she sniffed a flower.  Now she is getting ready to send off her second child. This August my nephew will be heading to Ball State University.  The same nephew who once looked so tiny in my husband's long arms, and who I trailed behind as he drove his little motorized car around the driveway, my little red haired girl in the passenger seat.  I listen to my sister-in-law as she prepares to let him go, to watch him as leaves the nest, and I feel panic for her and for myself. All of us, Robin, Susan, and myself have defined ourselves as mothers.  We gave up whatever careers we once had or dreamed about to be stay at home mothers devoted to caring for our offspring.  It wasn't something we set out to do, but something that felt right for all us.  We were the mothers who didn't jump up and down when their kids boarded their school buses, but who instead enjoyed having them home with us.  That is probably what will be our down fall, that feeling, but for the years that they were in our care that is how we worked.  Now as one by one our kids move into their next phase of their lives, away from us, we have to find ourselves away from our kids. I don't think that will be easy.  Not for me, or Susan, or Robin.  I think the most natural thing would be reconnecting with our spouses, but we each have husbands who work or who play quite nicely by themselves.  While they will hopefully spend time with us, we have got to also not depend on them for whatever lies ahead.  Which leads back to my original thought of how I'm thinking ahead to my future.  I think keeping a list of ideas might be the way to go, especially with my memory doing its flip flopping.  So far I have one item on the list. * Buy a puppy that will love me and only me.  One that will be small and will want to snuggle and cuddle. I'm not a certified shrink, although I play one often (in and out of my scrubs), but something tells me that that item might not be a good start; that I'm substituting one child for another.  I've randomly thought of things I could do like travel, but that means needing money, and since I didn't receive a paycheck for the job(s) I did as a stay at home mother I'm not sure that is a viable item for the list either.  And as I think of these items, like the puppy and traveling, than tandem thoughts pop up such as maybe I should take in an exchange student, or foster a kid, or learn to give pedicures and work from my bathroom to make the extra income to travel.  Then the thought of starting again with kids or going back to school makes me tired, which makes me realize I'm old, and then that depression just climbs on top of the kids are leaving soon depression and the weight becomes unbearable. It would be so much easier if Susan and Robin lived near me and then we could be depressed together every morning over coffee around my pool, but alas, we all three live miles apart.  Hmmmm...that gives me an idea.  Maybe a commune for retired SAHM where we all work together toward something, our spouses visiting us on the weekends?  Let me think on that one for awhile...I have five years.