where I give a shout out to The Terrible Cough, The Move, The Camper Van, and Empty Nesting
It’s been almost two weeks. He caught The Terrible Cough from the drummer at band practice the week before (that guy didn’t think he was contagious), and he had moped around the house for four days, cursing his unfortunate luck to be sick the weekend he wanted to move. And while he moped, he coughed all over us, in every room of the house. And he did laundry. And he “packed” (read: threw a bunch of his stuff in the laundry baskets along with his clean clothes). He had been waiting for this for so long—years— and now, to him, it seemed to be stalled, not to mention that the room he was planning to occupy had not yet been vacated by another roommate (that guy didn’t think there was much of a rush). Like, it was never going to happen! It’s crazy how much whinging came out of this young man.
Man-up, Bro!
Finally, by Tuesday of that week, Oren got the text that the room was all clear, the carpets had even been vacuumed. The Move began, excitement to finally be doing it overcoming any malaise he might have felt because of The Terrible Cough. He stopped all his bitching.
He didn’t take a lot with him: his clothes, his books, his roll-up mattress, a bookcase. He’s definitely got a monk-ish, living-the-ascetical-life vibe going. Don’t even ask me where he’s planning to keep his clothes. And his shoes (thank you, Jesus) are no longer tripping us right inside the front door.
Brian and I were allowed to join the merry moving party, taking a few things in our car. We were even allowed into the apartment, up to see his room, to look out his window which has a pretty nice view of the Cathedral of Learning in the heart of Oakland.
Now, I can picture him in his new place, which is important to me. And he’s living with his older brother, so that’s comforting too.
Brian and I have also been looking forward to (sometimes dreading?) The Move for a long time, too. When he was 16, possibly even earlier, he informed us that he was going to move out as soon as he turned 18. His birthday is in December, so we were like, Whatever, you can’t move out in the middle of your senior year of high school, haHA! And he was like, I can do whatever I want to when I’m 18, hahaHA! Anyway, he didn’t move out the second he turned 18, obviously, but we did talk about it off and on for the next two-ish years. We’ve had this constant reminder, a kind of countdown. Empty Nesting was coming for us.
We bought The Camper Van, remember?
Now for the past year a lot of other people have caught on that our youngest was going to graduate and be gone this summer, so the question that Every. Single. Person. has asked us is, Looking forward to empty nesting? Or, Empty nesting, oooh, excited? People who know us probably think that we have a Grand Tour planned, that we would take off the moment he was out of the house. It’s a fair assumption. I mean, we bought The Camper Van, remember? And we went on trips with the kids all the time, why wouldn’t we just up-and-leave as soon as we got both of them out of our hair?
Well, the other thing about Brian and I is that we aren’t rash or very spontaneous. Or, we aren’t rash but are more likely to be spontaneous with The Camper Van since you don’t have to plan much in advance to use the thing, to hop in it and drive where-ever-the-heck. So we don’t have a big plan right now. We do have some ideas. Okay, we have a hundred ideas. But. We want the young man to settle and get into a groove. We want to wait for the horrible hot summer to go away. We want to get The Camper Van back from the mechanic who tends to keep the thing for two weeks every time something on it needs to be fixed. And now, we want to get over The Terrible Cough, which Oren graciously left us with on his way out the door.
So, Empty Nesting? Well at the moment it means that we’re sleeping in separate parts of the house. “Sleep divorce” is not just for millenials. I have been considering this for years. Years! The Cough gets worse at night, people. While I have had The Cough for over a week now, Brian just came down with it. He coughed a handful of times today, and already, I was like, “Shut up!” (in my head.) And the weather today is perfect for climbing, yet here we are, stuck in the same house together all day long (‘cause, we also both work here, too), coughing and being generally super-annoying to each other.
I just don’t know how to answer the Empty Nesting question. It’s a process. At some point, Brian and I will fully embrace Empty Nesting. We’ll be driving all over the country and climbing our old, decrepit hearts out. Right now? No. I miss Oren. I think we genuinely have enjoyed each other (I’m speaking for myself, but maybe the feeling is mutual? At least sometimes). He and I often had great night-time conversations and TV-watching sprees after Brian went to bed at nine o’clock. He’s been my music guru since he was 13. Now I’ll have to put a record on the turntable myself instead of soaking up whatever he puts on, or surrender to Sad Dad Rock with Brian. God, I hate change.
I want to hang out in this space where I’m missing my son for a little bit longer because I’m not sure how to be around him now that he doesn’t live here anymore. Isn’t that strange? When he comes over now (which he has, like, a lot) I get all nervous and awkward. I want the visit to be all the things that I’m missing, and that is way too high an expectation. So I have to back off and stuff a sock in it or maybe he won’t want to come over very often. I don’t want to be a needy mom. Ew.
It won’t be like this forever, I know. It ain’t my first rodeo, y’all. Seb moved out, and I’d say our relationship has grown closer since then. The same thing will probably happen for my relationship with Oren too. I know. But first, I get to be sad. Plus, if I cry a little bit, then my tears loosen up The Cough.
I think mom’s should get special dispensation for practicing nostalgia. When all the stages of being a mom were good (not easy or perfect, mind you), I think it’s okay to look back and wish to return. Or, maybe the nostalgia I’m talking about is more timelessness, a blurring of time; raising kids happens so quickly that those other stages, in this case, all those other younger Orens, litter the present reality of young-adult-him moving out. People say all the time, Whenever I look at my kid, I always see the 6-year-old with the missing front teeth, or whatever.
Here is a definition of nostalgia from Scott Russell Sanders in his book Staying Put that I have quoted in the past:
The word nostalgia was coined in 1688 as a medical term to provide an equivalent for the German word meaning homesickness. We commonly treat homesickness as an ailment of childhood . . . and we treat nostalgia as an affliction of age. On our lips, nostalgia usually means a sentimental regard for the trinkets and fashions of an earlier time, for an idealized past, for a vanished youth . . . [That] is a shallow use of the world. The two Greek roots of nostalgia literally mean return pain. The pain comes not from returning home but from longing to return . . .
The time spent raising Oren has been so great, I long to go back and relive it again. So I’m sitting in nostalgia for a little while until I get used to our new way of being together.
But I leave you with a list of all the things I will celebrate once I’m done wallowing in said nostalgia:
- No shoes in the foyer
- No clothes all over the floor of his old room
- No shoes in the dining room
- More snacks in the cupboard
- No clothes all over the floor of the band room
- No shoes under the couch in the living room
- No whining (from him)
- More food in the fridge
- No clothes all over the floor of the basement in front of the washer and dryer
- No shoes next to the couch in the living room
- No shaven whiskers in the upstairs bathroom sink
- No shoes in the back room
- No snot-nosed illnesses (his anyway)
- No guitars by the front door
