Blog

Jun 10, 2023

Empty Nester

It’s graduation time for high school and college seniors. Congratulations to

It's graduation time for high school and college seniors. Congratulations to all. My twin sons graduated from college and it was a proud and happy moment for my wife and me. I don't know what was more joyous, watching them get their diploma or paying the final tuition bills.

With both of our children out of the house, my wife and I posted a banner outside our house that said it all, Mission Accomplished. Similar to the infamous banner across the aircraft carrier George W. Bush preened under declaring all major combat operations in Iraq had ended only six weeks after the invasion that began the war. The same war that didn't end for another eight years. It turned out our mission was not quite the fait accompli as we barely had a chance to celebrate either. Before we could so much as air out his bedroom, one of our sons was back.

The conversation was supposed to be like one of those Hallmark specials. The one where the father sits down with his recent graduate to discuss the future. The talk ends with a big hug and pat on the shoulder and the son riding off into the sunset. Mine didn't happen that way.

"So son, what are your plans? Say what again? You’re moving back? Where? To whose home, you say?"

We’ve been looking forward to being empty nesters since the boys were 2 weeks old. After 22 years, that dream was becoming a reality. Finally we’d have a guest room and a home office. Happy hour would begin at 2 p.m. and end at a bedtime of our choosing. Oh those best laid plans of mice and men who become fathers.

When the boys left for college, we hired a Hazmat company to clean their bedrooms. They had to enclose the home in a tent of vinyl-coated nylon tarpaulins to fumigate. Their rooms smelled so bad, we wanted to put the termites out of their misery.

With my son home again, I’m either anxiously waiting up for him to get home so I know he's safe, or pissed off because he woke me up when he got home in the middle of the night.

He got a job waiting tables and doesn't leave the house until 4 p.m. We’re supposed to tiptoe around the house until 3 p.m. so we don't disturb his sleep. When he says a certain four words, it literally drops me to my knees in anguish, "It's my day off."

The friends he's grown up with often come over. There's certainly nothing cute and precocious about them anymore. Now they’re adult-sized humans lurking around our house. When they all stomp down the hallway together, it feels like Apocalypse Now.

All of our food just evaporates. The last of my fresh baked sandwich bread that was crucial to the success of my lunch? Gone. He ate a dozen eggs in one day. Don't you know how expensive eggs are these days? Blank stare. Right, how would you know that?

My wife is a very calm person. Until she went looking for the soy sauce that was crucial to the success of her favorite spring rolls and there was none left because my son Hoover came across it in the pantry. She went nuclear. Nobody in our neighborhood has felt safe since.

We have three bathrooms in the house and somehow he's in all of them at the same time. He called a family meeting to tell us we need to stop coughing and sneezing because it was annoying. Son, we do that because you in our house is slowly killing us!

There has been one advantage to him living with us. We now have a dedicated IT technician on site. If we have a computer or phone issue, he fixes it in three seconds flat. Without him, we’d have no further contact with the real world. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Last week, he came into the living room all panicked and scaring us half to death. What's wrong?

We’re out of chocolate ice cream.

O.K, your mom will get more when she goes to the store in a few days.

Not good enough. I need to order it on Pea Pod to be here in a few hours.

Oh, you have an account? Blank stare.

A few years ago, our doorbell broke. We enjoyed not having strangers ring it all the time so we never fixed it. Now there's loud banging on the doors at all hours day and night like someone is breaking in. Honey, you can stop hiding, it's just the Door Dash guy dropping off his 1 a.m. snack.

When my son loses a sports bet, the whole house suffers the defeat. Thanks to the recent eliminations of the Celtics and Bruins, our poor dog is still quaking under the couch in fear. He only comes out to get his food from Door Dash.

Our son has started to look for an apartment. He told us about a place that was kind of rundown but was in a good location and had a low rent. The problem was it had a history of mice in the apartment. We told him to take it. We have plenty of advice for how to live with uninvited guests.

Scott's new book, The World According to Scott, is now available on Amazon, Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. Great gift for yourself, family and friends.

Scott, a Methuen native, can be reached at [email protected]

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