About six months ago, I finally exploded. I didn’t yell about the dishes. I yelled, "Do you even see me? Without the kids, am I just the housekeeper?"
He looked stunned. Men don’t attach their worth to the chaos the same way we do. But we are rebuilding. We are learning to date. Last week, we went to a bar that didn't have a kids' menu. I wore a shirt that wasn't from Costco. It was terrifying and thrilling. Writing from a Mom POV means being brutally honest about the vessel. My body has been a host, a food source, a taxi, and a jungle gym.
When my son, Marcus, called at 19 to say he wasn't coming home for the summer (he had an internship in Portland), I felt a physical snap in my chest. It wasn't heartbreak; it was liberation wrapped in panic. Without the PTA meetings, the pediatrician appointments, and the midnight "pick me up" texts, who was I?
I started painting last year. Watercolors. I am terrible. But there is a moment when the brush hits the paper where I am not a mom, not a wife, not a daughter. I am just Rhonda. The girl who used to draw horses in the margins of her math notebook in 1985.
At 50, I looked in the mirror and saw my mother’s eyes staring back at me. She passed away at 62. I did the math that morning. If I only have 12 years left, do I want to spend them crying over a dining room table that no one sits at? Let’s talk about marriage at 50. Dave (my husband of 28 years) and I hit what therapists call "the empty nest collision." For years, we were co-CEOs of the family corporation. We spoke in logistics. "I’ll get milk." "You pick up the dry cleaning." "Did you sign the waiver?"
My name is Rhonda. I am 50 years old. And I am finally learning who I am when I am not needed 24/7. For two decades, my POV was singular. I was the Gatekeeper. The Scheduler. The Finder of Lost Shoes. My brain wasn't a mind; it was a server farm running four different family calendars.
