Exploring The Empty Nest
The quiet in the house catches my attention.
Little did I know it’d be like this.
Lidia and I must make a stronger than usual effort to keep up our activities. Now that our last two boys have flown the coop we are discovering firsthand the rather dismal realities of the empty nest. Perhaps I should say new, challenging realities…
There are moments of confusion. The sensation of sailing through seas in the dark of night without a keel. After all, the house has gone from being happily active and noisy to just the two of us. Silence is normally my best friend.
The silence I like is the one I seek out, not the one imposed upon me.
Silence has now become that which greets us as we rise in the morning. This has suddenly become a source of contention between me and Lidia. She wants to go out more. I suspect so that she can fill her need for human interaction.
Oddly enough the slower pace in the house can become something I’m blamed for. I’m not so sure how she figures it that way. But like I say our two boys’ absence has given rise to unusual comments and an even greater sense of space and time in the house.
As if a new dynamic is placed upon us.
Some friends told us that now we’d be free to do as we wished. Our time would belong to us. We would decide which of many activities to joyfully launch into each day.
Oddly enough our bodies ache more now that the boys are gone. What’s that supposed to mean? No doubt some sort of auto defense system kicking in. Last night Lidia couldn’t go to sleep because of sharp pains in her right foot. She can’t lie on her side because of a sore right shoulder.
This shoulder pain suddenly appeared after a life mostly pain free. We think it absolutely has to do with the empty nest. Our stomach issues have made an envigored reappearance.
Yesterday early afternoon, a time when I’m usually very caught up in my lap top working out the kinks of another story my wife and I were instead staring blankly at the TV screen. Another movie had come to an end. We need to learn to measure out the doses of the various activities.
Instead of three movies do one! It can almost be as simple as that. Deal out activities in measured portions so as not to bore or burn out.
I never would have guessed that house construction and cooking shows could ever hold my attention. Yesterday Lidia and I got into a funny argument during a Mexican cooking show over the proper way to say tomato in Mexican Spanish. Is it tomate or is it jitomate? Yes, it can get to this.
One of the first things I noticed when our last boy left the house was a difficulty in sticking to my productive routines, (um, TV watching…).
Staring at our TV, watching those awful shows really rammed it home for me. Simply, that construction and cooking shows are not so terrible and in fact provide a welcome respite from writing, my Buddhist studies and deeper, intellectual efforts.
We have to do something about this new phase of our lives. For years I’d heard of peoples’ struggles once their kids had all gone.
The house which at times felt too small now can seem as if a cavernous mansion. As if pretty soon we’ll be able to listen to echoes. At least we finally got our ‘mansion’…
Another odd manifestation caused by an empty nest is a desire to see things as if under a magnifying glass. How to explain this? There really is no explanation, it just is. The mere act of becoming hyper observant is like watching water boil.
The ultra-observant phenomena has another unexpected impact. It shows the hours of the day down to a snail crawl. Try to unwrap that!
The days spent in an empty house is already booby trapped with an impossible to understand slowness. The slowness covers me like a thick comforter, stuffy, hot and humid.
An effort is called for, like pulling myself up by my bootstraps, to literally find thrill in the daily details. By imbuing things with a sense of vigor, ‘do it with élan…’ goes a long way to fend off the drabness.
Lidia and I stumbled early on over another reality. We’ve become hyper sensitive to everything. To what we talk about, what we eat, doing the dishes, getting ready for bed. this sensitivity includes an unlit fuse. Like a fat cherry bomb, the fuse is right there in plain sight. The slightest misstep or uncalled for comment can light it.
An effort is required to avoid lighting the bomb.
A heightened sense of greater diplomacy is becoming a greater part in our lives. Paramount for me is maintaining the peace with Lidia. A sort of delicate détente comes into play on those days when one of us gets up on the wrong side of the bed.
It happens. After all we are human. We get along wonderfully until we don’t or until one of us commits a gaffe. Let’s say if I make a mess when bringing in the fire wood. Bits of bark on her freshly swept floor is enough to set her off.
One of my pet peeves is her increased level of order giving. Lidia has always given me orders. Orders can be accompanied with a hint of impatience even negative sarcasm. Something I don’t react well to.
‘How many times do I have to tell you to pee in the damn toilet and not on the floor? After all Fred it’s just you and me now so you can’t blame it on me or one of the boys.’ The blaring truth of this statement disarms me. This has far reaching implications if you think about it. If I drop a piece of Stevia envelope, guess what? I will get caught. Pure and simple. And no, in Lidia's’ case, she’d rather die than drop a tiny scrap of something on the kitchen floor. It was me.
The point here is then if I didn’t make the bed just right you can’t blame the damn parrot or the dog as they’re not here. It’s just me!
Stuff like this can light the fuse. She knows it. It’s as if sheer boredom is goading both of us into the ring to go a few rounds. This is inevitable and it’s best to accept the fact. The sooner you reach this conclusion the better things will go for new empty nesters.
If we do get into it the years have shown that it’s up to me to bring the battle to a close. A change in tone and a few carefully chosen words, neutral like. I’ll even apologize even though it’s not warranted.
We both understand the necessity for maintaining the peace. We are two who regardless of our deep love for one another are capable of sinking the damn ship.
We have over the last twenty seven years come close.
And watch out for those killer ultimatums! This is sounding like marital counseling but the empty nest will cause many similar stresses to arise. Ultimatums: ‘Honey I swear if you ever do that again, I’m walking out of here…’ . Avoid resorting to the ultimatums, they are guaranteed to hurt later.
Since the boys left Lidia has thrown herself into her home projects with an impressive and renewed enthusiasm. There are times that after a day in my upstairs office I’ll go downstairs for coffee and hang out with Lidia. Much to my surprise she has rearranged the entire downstairs! She’s good at it and this is one of those activities that clearly feeds her.
My wise Mother told me on more than one occasion ‘son, leave the house decor to your wife, let her do as she pleases…’ Sage advice.
Her other area is the yard. For years this had been my domain. Watering, clearing out dead growth, cutting over grown branches, transplanting. It was my role to bring in new plants and shrubs.
She just took it over. First it was the watering during the hot, dry season. In fact she’d come out side and see me watering and immediately tell me I was doing something wrong. Maybe too much water pressure, too much water on the cactus, not watering the grass enough.
At first it bothered me but gradually it was kind of nice not having to worry about the yard!
Every once in a while I hint at who it was that first planted the damn yard. Yes I can digress into childhood like behavior. It’s more a source for laughter now. The odd thing is that she hadn’t taken over the yard until the empty nest was becoming imminent. As if she was preparing additional activities for herself once the boys had gone.
These activities become critical for a successful empty nest.
There’s a hard to identify metaphysical element to the new empty nest reality. Perhaps it’s that now it’s just the two of us which encourages introspective thinking. Or at least more than there was before.
Starting out with the empty nest has come to be symbolized by endless comparisons: a rite of passage, the crossing of a bridge, a bridge being burned, shifting gears, a new start, the list goes on. Without question the new phase requires positive, proactive thinking.
I can only imagine and sympathize with when a single parent is left alone. As if being cut adrift. Be grateful if it’s still the two of you.
The hours that are suddenly freed up because the kids have left can be used for creative efforts such as writing, painting, wood work and reading, time for a part time job even. The list is endless, Meditation, Yoga, short car trips with your spouse are now much more within reach.
Some might argue that this is not the time to get another dog. Some empty nesters do and it can be the start of a good chapter. But a dog, though loving and warm takes time, energy and added costs. If you want to travel around having a pet just may work against you. Some make it a big part of life and the dog becomes a welcome element, even on car trips.
Where before we felt needed by the boys we now find ourselves almost out of a job. Laughable on a certain level of course.
Not so funny in fact as now there is no one to take my words of guidance. In other words my role as teacher has come to an almost standstill. This will take some adjusting. Though our boys are still our children the almost moment to moment guidance and supervision have ended.
Just another lagoon of space once kept active now suddenly gone dry.
I purposefully waited until I’d finished writing on the subject before googling the challenges for new empty nesters. It was important to me to share my and Lidia’s unsullied experience without undue influence from researching it.
As with everything in life, no two things are alike. No to sets of parents share the same consequences arising from an empty nest.
My contribution contains some observations which I hope resonate with what’s going on in your lives. This new life as empty nesters.
Starting out in the empty nest is not necessarilly a bad thing. On the contrary you should strive to make it a positive adventure. A chance for new growth, discoveries about yourself and the world.
From all that we hear the initial unsettling feeling of the empty nest does go away. They say ‘you’ll see that over time life does pick up again’.
We have a couple of neighbors just reaching the eighties mark who live next door and are the perfect example of empty nesters. They have created a thriving cooking and food delivery business from their home. Before the delivery business they co-operated a successful restaurant in town.
The key for them is: stay active.
Stay active is an understatement. Our friends have reinvented their existence upon the planet. My sister and her semi- retired husband are another example of an amazing couple who didn’t give twiddling their thumbs a moment’s thought.
My Mother was widowed after we kids had left the house years before. She was left alone. When my dad was alive the two of them never missed a beat. No melancholia was ever going to dwell in those two hearts. They remained busy as bees working, painting, writing, church, a solid circle of friends.
In no way is this to gloss over the hour by hour minutia that greets us as we get up every morning. Will it take work? Damn well better believe it. I’ve discovered however that so often the petty things often will smooth out almost on their own.
After my dad passed our Mom just rose above the difficulty. Her powerfully positive outlook would never allow her to categorize her days as difficult…
On her own she proved constantly that happiness was there if she just reached out for it. She was a wonderful example.
As with our neighbors and my sister’s marriage surviving the empty nest the key clearly is keeping active. It’s important to find those exemplary couples who have entered into the empty nest reality and have made it work for them.
We are surrounded by great examples for how to attack the empty nest blues. They have proven overwhelmingly that once the kids are gone life does not have to come to a grinding halt.
