Prelude To An Empty Nest

If you’re an empty nester now, you’ll appreciate this! The home of Prudence Baird, a contributor to the Blogazine, “From Fifty is the New…,” isn’t empty yet, but already she feels her nest thinning out. So she calls this piece, “Prelude To An Empty Nest.”

The screen door bangs shut behind me, echoing in a house that only last week was filled with the last frantic scrabblings of summer vacation.

The school backpacks no longer hang on their hooks by the door; they are off for another tour of duty filled with new spiral notebooks, freshly sharpened pencils, pocket-sized tissue packs and re-charged cell phones.

I stand just inside the front door, unable to move. Unwilling to hang up my keys. Incapable of addressing this morning’s breakfast dishes, still in the sink.

I am paralyzed by the sudden realization that all too soon there will be no more first days of school. No more carpools to drive, after-school games to attend or fundraisers to plan. In that not-too-distant future, what will autumn be like without the noise, commotion and companionship children bring to a home, to a life—to my life?

My eardrums ache, searching to pick up even the faintest of noises. In the distance, I hear my neighbor’s chainsaw cutting wood for the winter. Upstairs, a gentle snore tells me the cat is curled up in a warm shaft of morning sun.

As my ears adjust to the heaviness of this newly hatched solitude, I realize that the sounds I’m hearing, and those that are absent, are an auditory foreshadowing of life after and beyond school-aged children.

Ethan, 15, is already preparing us for the inevitable separation by spending most of his days and evenings at school or out with friends. But my youngest, Casey, is still very much at home.

At 13 years, with his 85 pounds stretched over a 5’3” frame, Casey is thin and taut like an old-fashioned car antennae. And like that obsolete car part, he picks up signals the rest of us cannot receive. He broadcasts these in an ongoing stream-of-consciousness that morphs into a (mostly) one-way conversation; his volume stuck on “loud” – the only variation being “really loud.”

If Casey is in the house, you feel his presence the way you feel electricity building before a thunderstorm. Intervals of stillness are punctuated by the scritch-scratching of his colored pencils as he draws. Paper rustles; the pencil-sharpener grinds. Soon, his pregnant hush gives birth to another singular portrait and a verbal onslaught of insights and endless inquiry.

“Who is this?” he demands, sticking an 8 ½ x 11-inch piece of paper five inches from my nose.

“Hmmm,” is my customary response as I back away to gain perspective. “Ho Chi Minh?” I venture.

“How did you know?!” Casey cries, delighted.

“It looks like him.”

“How? How does it look like him?”

And thus begins another lesson in the ancient art of physiognomy, or “face reading”… something children like my son are supposed to be unable to do. Like a cat that senses he’s not supposed to trespass on certain laps, however, Casey ventures there anyway, attempting to capture with his portraits the very essence that drives unique individuals who push society forward, haul civilization backwards, or simply create a wake with their unkempt or munificent lives. Samuel Johnson, Spinoza, Gandhi, James Brown – no one escapes his scrutiny.

He forces my somnambulant brain to awaken, to dust off forgotten lessons in history, geography, cultural trivia. He makes connections, hauls me along untrodden pathways, bumping into long-forgotten factoids or stumbling over new information. The impact of war, greed, poverty, and education on a person are examined and parsed; all part of a borderless jigsaw puzzle Casey has constructed, starting point unknown.

“Who was the president of South Viet Nam?” Casey demands.

I’m stumped.

“It’s Ngo Dinh Diem!” he crows.

Eventually, I deduce that Casey’s Vietnam War obsession began with an overheard comment on NPR days ago.

Figuring out Casey’s inspirations is a Sherlock Holmesian exercise; I congratulate myself on solving the mystery. Casey, however, has moved on to another portrait, another obsession. The pencil scratches furiously.

Now, with the boys back in school, I have a whole six hours to myself every day, five days a week – plenty of time to catch up on just about everything I ignored all summer.

But instead of feeling relieved, free of Casey’s strenuous curiosity, I feel adrift in a fitful silence.

Somewhere, I wonder, is he asking someone else, “How? How does it look like him?”