Last week I went in for my 50,000 mile check-up. When the doc asked how I was doing, for the first time in my life I answered, “Not so good.”

Welcome to middle age and beyond. Everything from here on out is down hill and I feel like Sisyphus trying to keep that infernal boulder from rolling into the valley. Yea, though I walk through the valley, I may fear not . . . but I’m lugging around twenty extra pounds, my back aches, my feet are sore and I’m just so damned tired all the time.

After eliminating any serious causes for my complaints, the doc asked me if I was experiencing a lot of stress. When I answered in the affirmative he said I had to learn to identify the source of the stress and eliminate it.

I told him that was a good idea but I’d probably end up in jail.

I thought being an adult, being married and raising kids was tough, but this empty nest thing is no piece of cake. I still worry just as much about my kids, but I have even less say in their life choices.

I may be dealing a lot less with the children since they’ve flown the coop, but thanks to retirement I have twice-as-much husband in this phase of life. I was the CEO of home and hearth for more than 30 years. Now all of a sudden it feels like I’ve been demoted to facility manager.

I used to be able to dismantle, paint and redecorate a room between the time my husband left for work and returned for supper. Now it takes me longer than that just to explain what I want to do . . . or rather why I want to do it. Being that I’m over twenty-one, I can’t quite come to terms with this permission asking thing.

He wants to know why he doesn’t have a say in how we decorate. I point to the NASCAR die casts that are now a feature of our living room.

He wants us to do everything together – Wednesday softball, Friday night races, and Sunday football game on the widescreen at the local bar.

A few weekends ago, I mentioned that a local band, including a few guys who used to play music with my brother, was playing nearby.

“So what?” he said.

I didn’t bother to explain the “what” was that I wanted to go listen to them. Any fun I might have had was spoiled by his obvious condemnation. Funny thing is I can act similarly disinterested in any number of sporting events yet he seems oblivious to the fact that “we” are not having as good a time as he is.

Cleaning the house and cooking meals apparently doesn’t come under the umbrella of doing everything together either, though cleaning the garage does.

I hate to complain. It’s not like I don’t want him here. After ten-years apart while he drove an 18-wheeler across the country, I really do want to spend time with him. Given the heart attack that should have left him dead in his truck somewhere in Indiana, I could be lamenting a very lonely life right now.

I thought mid-life was all about being stuck in the middle – somewhere between young and old, between raising children and aging parents, working hard and reaping rewards.

So why is it so gosh-darn hard to find the middle ground between too much alone and too much together?

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GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

When my children were little, Christmas time was a flurry of decorations, school and church programs, baking and making presents. The budget was tight and shopping was last on the list. My first Christmas as a newly wed, I purchased cheap paper doilies and with a little bit of folding and tape, turned them into three-dimensional ornaments for our tree.

When the youngest was in grade school, her teacher sent home a blank cut-out of a huge Christmas stocking. We were instructed to decorate it in a way that represented our family. Out came the shoe box of photos from over the years. Before long both of her sisters, much older than she and far too teen-jaded for warm-fuzzy family fun, had joined us at the table strewn with scissors, glue, ribbon and glitter. We spent the entire evening cutting and pasting our family history onto that poster-board stocking.

Those were the days!

My children, of course, have different memories. Such as the first year I won the battle over harvested tree versus artificial tree. Every December their father and I zipped ourselves into snowmobile suits, trekked out into our wooded acreage and cut down a tree. The first year, I was 9-months pregnant, hiking through snow up to my thighs and wondering if I’d be giving birth in the back forty. By the tenth year, it just wasn’t fun anymore.

So I over-ruled the majority and purchased our first artificial tree. After it was assembled and decorated my middle daughter said, “It’s just not Christmas.” I’d argued this point with her father one too many times and I didn’t appreciate her coming in on his side. I restrained myself from choking the little Benedict Arnold and she concluded, “Mom isn’t cussing a blue streak about the lopsided tree with bare spots and Dad isn’t hiding out watching the football game on TV”.

Now my children are all grown up and each of them, in their own way, hates Christmas. They can’t afford gifts – that stresses them out. They have too many obligations (multi generations of blended families) – that stresses them out. They don’t see eye to eye with each other’s spouses and significant others – that stresses them out. They would prefer that Christmas come and go without them – and that stresses me out.

For too many years now, I have been spending the weeks before Christmas turning myself inside out and upside down in an attempt to deliver a Christmas holiday that everyone will enjoy. I do this mostly for my husband, whose only wish is to have all of our children and grandchildren in the same place on the same day for a family holiday. After many failed attempts, I have one thing to say. Good luck on that.

As for me, my idea of the perfect Christmas would be making homemade decorations and gifts – from the sea shells I gathered at the beach, attending sunrise services – on the pier, baking – clams, crab and lobster in the sand and sending postcards in lieu of Christmas greetings – Wish you were here! Hope you can join us next year.

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GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

My youngest daughter is six weeks away from marking the half-way point of her sophomore year in college. She completed her freshman year on the campus of a nearby state university – just far enough away to warrant dorm residency and close enough to visit home for an afternoon, evening or weekend anytime the notion struck.

Now she is 400 miles away from home enrolled in a big-city, private college. My born and bred country mouse is thriving (by all reports) in the excitement of a major metropolis. Yee-gads!

When she first set off to college, she worried about me. “You’re not going to go off the deep end or anything are you?” she asked. “I mean the whole empty nest thing and all?”

I assured her that while I loved her dearly and would miss her greatly, I had been working toward this eventuality for 30 years and was kind of looking forward to it. I have to admit, the true separation anxiety didn’t settle into my heart and soul until this year. Four hundred miles feels like four thousand.

Empty nest, last baby to spread her wings and a few tearful moments here and there put aside, I am so proud of her I’m nearly busting open at the seems. Forget that she is following in – no make that surpassing in great leaps and bounds – her grandfather’s and mother’s journalistic endeavors. She has grabbed hold of her dream and she’s riding it like a cowgirl atop a bucking bronco, with her eye on the prize. Whether she holds on for the full ride, is thrown off a few times before reaching her goal, or decides to set her dream free and watch it gallop off without her, makes no difference in my eyes.

My thought (selfish desire?) that she’d decide the cosmopolitan life wasn’t her destiny after all and would return home post haste seems quite unlikely. If I have any remaining doubt, the life-size posters of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s decorating her dorm-room walls say it all.

So why am I feeling like the bad mother? Because I’ve gone ahead and made the big change. I’ve re-purposed her bedroom! I moved my computer and files in, hooked up a phone line and made it my office. It’s not like I can’t change it back in one afternoon. And I haven’t boxed up all of her things (okay, a lot of them, but not all). I still have some of her artwork on the walls. I’ve hung only my out-of-season wardrobe in the closet with the few things she left behind. And I still have her collection of lucky St. Patrick’s Day figurines on display on the tiered shelf next to her bed.

Jumbled in with my office bric-a-brac, the cacophony is giving the impression that the room belongs to someone with a few too many personalities rattling around in her head (come to think of it, that might be a good thing for a writer). I’m hoping the newly painted, deep mauve walls help calm things down a bit. The color is Shakespeare’s Muse and I chose it without knowing the name. Is that providence or what? Perhaps it will motivate me over the next few years one tenth as much as my daughter has inspired me these last few months.

So, youngest child of mine, if you’re reading this (and I know you are), I hope you know that you can come back any time. You were the last to leave and it was harder to help you fly away from home, but that was my job all along. Now that you are showing me how to reach for a dream and ride it for all it’s worth, maybe some day I’ll be able to follow in your footsteps.

Oh, and just so this doesn’t go to your head, I’m equally as proud of your equally strong minded and free spirited sisters – who will be quick to remind you that their rooms were repurposed the minute the door closed behind them on their way out. And will also remind you they were welcomed with open arms when they returned.