O.L.D.

 It was quite a big day yesterday. 

It was my daughter’s 27th birthday and she got the keys to her first house. It's her first mortgage and the first time she is responsible for all the maintenance and decoration.

Weirdly, although we are excited for her it has also made the Long Suffering Husband and I feel O.L.D. (Overwhelmed at Leaving Daughter). I say weirdly because it's not something you would expect.  I mean, she's 27!  She's left home before and we were not expecting to have her with us for this long this time.  Lockdown meant that we had to adapt to having another adult living in our house and it was actually fine.  She's only moving around the corner and so we are completely confused about why we feel so overwhelmed.

Maybe it's because the exciting part of her life is just beginning which reminds us that ours is over.  In normal circumstances, people our age, whose children are becoming independent would be thinking about travel, fine dining and spending the kids inheritance but it is difficult to imagine that those things will ever happen again at the moment. When you reach your fifties, you are somehow aware that you haven't got long before your life is about hospital appointments, comparing ailments with your friends and scouring the obituary column of the local newspaper for people you know.  As soon as your children leave home you feel as though you should be making the most of every moment.  

I was pregnant with her when I was 27 and somehow this knowledge also feels overwhelming.  The LSH's dad died when he was 27.  Milestones make you reflect on these things.  We have thought a lot about how our parents would have loved to have seen their grandchildren buy their own homes.

We are also having to remind ourselves that we haven't bought a second house. The LSH was wondering how he was going to fit in all the extra jobs he would now have to do and I felt guilty that I had to work and couldn't help clean her new home.  It would be overwhelming to have to run two houses.

We are both a little tired and over-emotional today and feeling OLD.