Admittedly, I haven’t been an empty nester for very long. Two days, give or take a few hours. And I learned a few things when my older child left home, even though the nest wasn’t officially empty at that point. But there’s no question about the fact that Home is a different place now that there are no children living here.
For one thing, it’s very quiet. We’re a quiet family anyway–we don’t yell, we watch TV infrequently, and music tends to be something we save for the car. So for me to say the house is quiet is indeed saying something.
For another, there’s so much room.
My daughter’s bedroom stayed essentially the same as it was when she left for college until this past summer, when she moved into her first apartment. At that point, she noted, “I’m really moving away from home this time.” I realize she might be back, but she’ll just be visiting. She’ll sleep in the same bed where she slept for all the years she lived here, and we’ll still refer to that as Jordan’s Room–but it’s actually my office now. I’ve already set up my laptop and books and desk supplies. Today is the first official day of my sabbatical–this room is where I’ll finish the novel I started some years ago, in a different room of our house.
My son’s bedroom is smaller, so it hasn’t been repurposed–just cleaned and organized. We moved the bed so it lines up with a different wall and opens up the middle of the room. We took down some of the wall decor that had lingered from his younger years. It still looks like a teenage boy’s room, with Spurs memorabilia on the walls, and he’s just moved into a dorm for the time being, so I know he’ll be back in a few months. That room is still very much his.
But his bedroom door, like the door to his sister’s room, stays wide open now. Their window blinds are open, too. There’s a whole lot of light coming from that end of the hallway, for the first time in a long while. Which is ironic, because the song that keeps playing in my head this weekend is Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine.
Still, I think that light is a metaphor. I’m just not sure how to read it yet.
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