Two down, one to go, Part 2

The two-down reference (see previous post) is to the fact that my second child, who turns 17 in a week, is on an amazing adventure of her own in Cairo, Egypt. She and a friend are visiting one of my oldest and best buddies who works at the American University in Cairo. She is graciously hosting the girls, and has arranged for them to take basic Arabic lessons every morning, and work with Sudanese refugees at a nearby church in the afternoons. Aside from that, they'll visit the pyramids, souks, Muslim and Christian Cairo (two very different day-long tours, apparently) and go to a resort that looks like Shangri La on the Red Sea. They'll also visit her friend's large extended family in Malaga, Spain for a week after Cairo.

My daughter plans to interview the refugees, learn about the nightmare in Darfur and write about it for her college entrance essay when she returns. She'll also be exposed to a level of injustice and human misery she surely couldn't conceive of before, which I think most teenagers, and in fact most clueless Americans, would do well to see.

So that leaves my youngest daughter, the feistiest of them all, who finishes school in a week and will go off to the same camp as her oldest sister for the month of July. My husband and I will have ten days without kids before the middle one returns from overseas to work for the rest of the summer.

These short empty nest trials are a good thing. It takes a while to get used to the eerie quiet and realization each night that we don't have to wait up or check on anyone. There's a weird lonely feeling, even though we've yearned for this type of freedom so many times over the years. There's also undeniably a sense of total freedom. I don't have to come home after work, don't have to attend sports or school functions or drive anyone anywhere, don't have to make dinner if I don't feel like it, can go downtown or to a movie or wherever I bloody well want.

But what DO I want? What now?? That's the interesting and somewhat/sometimes troubling question...