EMPTY NESTS AND KIDS

Recently the words empty nest have come up and it made me think of my daughter. With 3 children, one of them who is disabled only in the way of not being able to walk, she has very busy days that go by quickly. Her only thought is for the reviving sleep that she will need at night to get though the next day. And even that gets interrupted during the night meeting the needs of her children, one of who has developed the habit of waking up at 4am!
Every day is an adventure because she never knows what one or all of the children will be up too the next day. She says that the "little monsters" probably dream of what they are going to do the next day and how they're going to drive her nuts with their antics.
For instance, Izzabella, the 8 month old, and her 4 year old disabled brother Jr. are in cahoots together. My daughter has to hide her phone because Jr. has a habit of using the speed dial to call everyone and he knows which number belongs to what person. The other day my daughter put her phone under the pillow on the bed. Izzabella was on the bed and when Jr. crawled up she reached under the pillow and handed the phone to Jr. That same day they were fighting over a toy and my daughter took it away and put it in the bedroom closet. As soon as Izzabella got down on the floor she took Jr. over to the closet and showed him where the toy was. Imagine the look on my daughter's face in both instances. All I could do was laugh when she told me about it. Her oldest son Zander is 6 and loves water or anything liquid. One day he emptied the bathroom waste basket , filled it with water and took it into his room to wash all of his cars. In the summer he'll go his friend's 2 doors down and his mom will tell him not to get wet from the pool. Yet he comes back with his clothes soaked, but he rationalizes by saying that his clothes will dry and he did take his shoes off. He pays attention to everything where his mom is concerned. She told me of an instance where he knew she didn't eat one day because there was only enough for him and his siblings. I let her know that that better not happen again. If she needs something she needs to tell me. But that is just an example of how in tune Zander and his mom are. And that's what mothers are for when it comes to their children, to make sure they have what they need even when they have families of their own.
All of these little things add up to memories to be remembered and laughed about later on when the babies are adults and have children of their own. And the stories are great to tell their children even though their parents tell us not to. (But that's what grandparents do, right?)
All of these things that I've written about come down to the fact that one day all of the babies will leave the nest and that's how life is. But no matter where they are, who they are with or what they are doing something will remind them of what we mothers have said or done for them. They will be good parents and people because they have those memories to draw on when they have a problem and we are no longer there to go to. And even when we are no longer in this life the memories of us will live on in their hearts and be passed down through the years to our children's children and so on.
So even though one day all of our nests will be empty our hearts will not be because we will always carry the memories of our children in there too. We will bring them out to remember when we are happy or sad. And they will always "remember MAMA."