Empty nests: When kids fly the coop
In a new collection of essays, parents write about being alone — again
 Voice |
This year, more American parents will find themselves alone than ever before. Karen Stabiner has done a great deal of research on this new demographic: the empty nesters. In her new collection of essays, “The Empty Nest: 31 Parents Tell the Truth About Relationships Love and Freedom After the Kids Fly the Coop,” well-known authors, such as Anna Quindlen, Ellen Goodman and Susan Shreve, as well as less familar ones write about their experiences. Read an excerpt:
Proof of Love
Karen Stabiner
An old hard-shell suitcase is like a book. It sits open on the bed, symmetrical, cracked along its spine, waiting to see what story it gets to tell this time. A family vacation means shorts and sandals and a big floppy hat that rolls up; a business trip means good wool in a monochromatic palette. Either way, an old suitcase demands planning, and rewards economy of scale. There is no room for extraneous detail; the frame won’t yield. My husband has one that belonged to his father, stiff cream leather with trim two shades darker and brass fittings. We never use it.
A new suitcase is more of a receptacle, with its soft sides, its wheels, and zippers that open to reveal another six inches of space. It allows for indecision and spontaneity—an extra pair of shoes even though red goes with nothing else you brought, the goofy souvenir that will go onto the back shelf with all the other souvenirs. A mother might say that a new suitcase lacks discipline, having spent her share of trips lugging a bulging case that a little girl can no longer manage. A daughter sees it differently. A pouchy case on wheels is all about potential. It’s ready for adventure.
We don’t yet own a suitcase big enough for our next major trip, which will be to take Sarah to college in the fall. I doubt that such a case even exists; how can you pack an entire life into a finite space? I expect that we will have to use more than one: We will stride onto campus together, Sarah in the middle, Larry and me at either flank, pulling her future behind us in thirds, as we walk up to the first room she will live in that is not down the hallway from ours.
She was four when the Northridge earthquake hit, and I was down that hallway and at her bedside before I was fully awake. She giggled as I reached down to grab her and get her away from the windows. “Mommy, I tried to sit up, but the house made my legs fly up in the air!” she said. This is the thing about an impending departure: My mind scrolls back and forth through history, as though I could lock onto a memory and slow things down.
Not a chance. Like any child, Sarah has been leaving in increments since she got here, and she has stayed, briefly, in rooms that were not hers—summer programs and school trips to here and there. But we handled those with easy denial and a single suitcase. Sarah is the granddaughter of one man who sold restaurant equipment and another who sold liquor, so she has the DNA to pack light. One underfed red duffel? She couldn’t be gone long. Besides, there were brackets at either end of those trips, which always took place during spring break, or right before school started. The obligations of young life waited for her. We knew she’d be right back.
When Sarah was a little girl, I was the one who traveled, just once or twice a year, and I had a simple and inviolate rule: I could pack anything as long as the suitcase fit as a carry-on. Homebound delays upset me. Sitting on the plane while we waited for an open gate, standing behind another passenger who wanted to complete her makeup before she walked down the aisle, walking behind what might have been an angelic child if not for the Beauty and the Beast wheelie she kept bumping into the seats, slowing us down—things that wouldn’t have bothered me if I were with Sarah drove me crazy when I wasn’t. I could not spend a half hour watching everyone else’s suitcases revolve around the luggage carousel. I had to be able to get off the plane fast, to trot down the moving sidewalk and head directly for a taxi.
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