If Paradise Is Half as Nice

Someone I know has been complaining recently about “empty nest syndrome”, the day you apparently waken up and realise your kids have gone for good leaving just you and the other half rattling round the house like a pair of ill fitting false teeth.

I’m a long way away from this happening but several things struck me about this. Firstly, how can it have come as a surprise? Presumably parents get clues to their kids flying off? All night parties and elaborate lies about staying over at a friend’s house are God’s way of preparing mums and dads for the future. Passing exams and getting accepted for University several hundred miles away is a bit of a clue too, as are the ever longer spells in Youth Courts or chats with the social worker who has become so close they send a Christmas card and get named in your will.

Then there’s the other giveaway, the conversation that starts with “Can I borrow some money dad? Say a hundred grand for a deposit on a flat?”.

So it can't come as a surprise, but I do understand how it would take a bit of adjusting when your offspring leave and are replaced by two old friends you haven’t seen for a while - Peace and Quiet.

If I can’t hear blaring music, remixed with a bit of shouting and arguing over whose turn it is to wash up, I assume I’ve either come home from work still wearing my headphones or I’ve got the time wrong and it’s actually four in the morning. Perhaps God’s not daft and he decided at the planning stage to make hair grow in our ears as a way of blocking out the noise of teenagers.

Having an empty nest would not just mean peace, it would also mean getting access whenever I want to my own clothes instead of tracking down my black socks in my twelve year old’s ballet bag, or my hooded sweatshirt in her sister’s dirty washing stored on the bedroom floor.

There would be no more switching on the Sky TV box to find it so clogged up with America’s Top Model that it hasn’t had room to record the football, no more paying orthodontists slightly more than New Zealand’s national health budget every time a tooth goes crooked, and no getting hairdressing bills that look like Simon Cowell’s tax bill.

Above all, this empty nest thing means no more being treated like a taxi. I set this Saturday aside to catch up on some stuff for myself but ended up having to make several trips to drop off and pick up from dancing lessons. Then there’s ferrying them around for what used to be called “playing at my friend’s house” but is now to be maturely called “hanging out with my pals”, more trips for netball practice, and so on. I’m thinking of putting a yellow light on my sunroof and painting my ‘phone number on the doors of my car. At least mini cab drivers get paid.

So, complain about empty nest syndrome? Bring it on. Let me and the wife get our lives back. We’ll travel the world, spend all our money and then come home old, and infirm, and ask our kids to drive us around to tea dances and Bingo nights or pick us up from church socials.

Empty nests may be distressing for some, but think of it this way. It’s one step closer to the magical days of payback.