coming home to an empty nest
the house i walked into the other day, upon return from faraway, was not the house i left. mostly, it looked the same. same pair of stools at the kitchen counter. same loose brick on the backdoor step. but here and there things were missing: coats no longer weighing down the coat hooks; size 12 shoes, all gone; the big ol’ speaker with the disco lights, the one parked beside the birdseed bin ever since last springtime’s college graduation, it had up and vanished.
and the silence was the loudest i had heard in a long, long while.
whilst i was away, there arrived an absence.
my beloved and i, for the first time in nearly 31 years, now dwell in an empty nest.
the younger fledgling has flown the coop. and we, the grownups, haven’t much clue what to do with the newborn stillness.
while i was off in the nation’s capital, puttering about Boy No. 1’s apartment, planting myself in the way back of his law school lecture hall, motoring about the countryside in search of sought-after antiques, Boy No. 2 set south for the ‘hood to which he was born.
he left behind a room that would be described as empty, if not for the torrent of assorted trinkets strewn in his wake. (it’s a collection of castoffs that counts among its contents a box of not-yet-dusty college paraphernalia, a half-burned chicago-scented candle (who knew?!), the oddest assortment of half-empty bottles and squeezed-dry tubes, outgrown clothes, and, yes, a tall stack of various welcome-home placards we’d penned upon his many returns over the years.)
as of one week ago, this old house boasts an official population of two and only two.
i, though, only stepped into the stillness the day before last––late to the game, as i so often am. my mate, the boy’s papa, has had a six-day jump on the vast emptiness, and he deems it a “sad, sad” state of being.
we just plain miss the kid, is the gist of it.
and while a piece of me is feeling the pangs, i’m just as keenly approaching this new endeavor as if a room to which i’d never before entered. i’ve always known it was there at the end of the hall but the knob hadn’t yet turned, and so as i now tiptoe about, peeking into its nooks and crannies, i am still getting to know my way.
for starters, the quiet. the pared-down daily rhythms (no more nightly shuttle of the old sedan to park it near the train once the meters dozed off at 9 p.m., and where it awaited the boy’s 1:05 a.m. arrival from downtown, thus sparing him a long-enough walk in the cold and the dark and whatever the weather gods chose to hurl on his route). no more rushing to throw some semblance of breakfast in a rumpled brown bag as he raced off to work and we all held our breath that he’d beat the train to the station. (and, yes, yes, if you’re starting to catch on that we might be among the dotingest parents that ever there were, we plead utterly guilty.)
did i mention the newfound dearth of laundry? or the fact that the cupboards look to be barer than ever before?
in that way that the mind plays tricks, as it wraps itself around those episodes in life it’s not before encountered (after a birth, a death, a diagnosis), i find it playing a form of peek-a-boo. an almost haunting hide-and-seek. i forget the kid is not asleep behind the bedroom door. wake up and skip a beat or two till i remember not to check that he made it home the night before. remind myself there’s no need to leave the porch light on when i tiptoe off to sleep.
in this day and age, where youngins come and go till their middlings or older, this new empire of emptiness cannot be called an inevitable geography. while the college years gave us a taste of it, this time round it seems a sharper, bolder border, a less permeable line than the empty nest of yore, when the emptiness ebbed and flowed according to academic calendar.
this time the kid is paying his own utilities, and sending off a monthly check to the landlord. and except for the comfy armchair and the rug he whisked from his upstairs room, he needs us not in his domestic equation.
and while he whistles the freedom song, his papa and i are fumbling in a fog across the contours of this new state of being. largely, i find myself deeply curious, and admit to something of a relieved sigh that i no longer will wake in the night to be sure i hear him clomping up the stairs.
time turns and turns in labyrinthine spirals, and with every twist we see ourselves from whole new angles. though i know full well that parenting is a post without pause, and one i intend to hold onto till my very last breath, this empty nestiness allows for––begs for––a whole new deepening. we’re a duet again, his papa and i, and on our own to chart our days. indeed, it’s solitude i’ll oft befriend.
which makes me think that now must be the hour in a lifetime when our soul begins its quickening, something of a leavening, with more hours to read, more years to remember, heavier questions to ponder. my prayer is that with the quiescence there comes a gathering of deeper grace.
of course, it aches a bit to think we’re past the years where cacophony was a daily occurence. where my hours were filled with comings and goings, and assorted bunches of kids clumped in the basement or were planted in sleeping bags or stuffed in the way back of the old red wagon. where an hour to myself was both rarity and marvel.
but maybe, just maybe, the quiet that’s tiptoed in will point the way toward the wise old lady i’ve always wanted to become.
and let us indulge in a glistening bit of mary O here this morning. an old favorite, something that indeed kills me with delight….
Mindful
by Mary Oliver
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light,
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
how did you navigate through the rocks and shoals of those uncharted landscapes life has surely thrown your way?
pull up a chair 