Grant probably even asked me at the end of this hike, which we did together, how my workout was.

“How was your ride?” “Your run?” “Your workout?”

Variations on a question Grant, my husband, tosses at me after nearly every sweat session I’ve done for the past two decades. Usually, my answer is one syllable long (fine; good; hard) possibly followed by another vanilla sentence: My legs were tired. I felt strong. I’m glad it’s done.

Not a particularly riveting conversation or memorable encounter.

When Legos were underfoot and we were out of dog food again, his predictable question used to, if I’m being honest, annoy me slightly. Why did he have to ask while I was in the middle of a volleyball carpool text chain while also ordering school uniforms and trying not to burn the grilled cheese?

That said, I also loved knowing it was coming. His question connected us amidst the chaos, acknowledged our shared priority to sweat, validated my commitment to movement.

That full-tilt childhood has, in what seems like a sneeze, passed. I’m now the mother to an 18-year-old college freshman who lives over 1,500 miles away, and a 15-year-old high school sophomore whose performing-arts-focused schedule has him at school from 7:30 to past dinner almost daily.

I’m not technically an empty nester, but I’m not digging for worms anymore either.

The dishwasher no longer needs to be run twice a day. The only mess on the kitchen counter is the one I make. Shoes don’t pile up under the table in the tv room, empty cookie boxes aren’t abandoned in the pantry, the front hall doesn’t need vacuuming daily. I have no come-do-this-asap! ammunition to yell up the stairs—and there’s no audience up there anyway.

A quiet house—something I used to covet—is now the norm. Usually the silence feels sublime, but it can also feel suffocating. When the latter mood descends, I know I need to force myself through the front door and interact with the world. Go work at a coffee shop. Take the dogs to the park. Text a friend to walk. Be extra chatty with the grocery store clerk.

Those things provide a temporary reprieve, but they’re not enough. I don’t need a daily schedule that stretches me from dawn until dusk again, but I do thrive on structure and schedules so I’ll show up even when I’m not feeling it. (See also: endurance athlete training.)

I’ve set up one volunteer gig so far: helping weekly at my niece and nephew’s elementary school library. (Eloise and ECE kids? Dreamy.) I’ve also got an email into Back on My Feet, which has a Denver chapter.. I’ve stopped to read a promotional Tai Chi poster at the rec center enough times to realize I should give a round of classes a go. I’ve investigated banjo lessons. They’re not as pricey as I thought they’d be, but don’t be counting on the AMR podcasts to have a new theme song anytime soon.

Back when I had to rally to get out of bed to answer the call of, “Can you come tuck me in?” I didn’t realize how quickly my kids would launch into the world. Back when I lived behind the steering wheel, I didn’t realize how important the casual conversations at teacher-parent conferences and on pool decks were until my calendar was swept clean of them. Back when I glossed over Grant’s post-workout check-ins because I was so BUSY, I didn’t realize how much they would mean to me today.

And now, 21 years into marriage, I am once again reminded of how grateful I am for Grant’s inquiry consistency. My answers still mostly hover in the fine/good arena, but sometimes they bloom into a sentence, a paragraph, maybe even a full conversation to fill the silence.