EMPTY NEST SYNDROME

So my firstborn has left the building. The anticipation was most definitely worse than the reality of leaving him. He couldn’t have been more excited…and more keen for us to leave once we had helped him unpack all his worldly belongings:-

Which looked more like rubbish, I have to say:-

His father came to collect him and all his worldly goods and I and his brother and sister followed them down there in another car. On arrival we all carried stuff in, checked out his new (very small) room and left him to it. We weren’t too sad when we left him. In fact, I was quite jealous. All those gorgeous new shiny people to meet. I want there to be something like that for grownups – although I guess we would all be a little rough round the edges compared to them and perhaps therefore it wouldn’t be so appealing with all the additional baggage we’d be bringing to the party…

Even before we’d left the building he’d gone to introduce himself to some of his new friends. Here he was waving us off in his room in a corridor that looks much like the corridor in my hall of residence all those years ago….and the smell doesn’t appear to change much either:-

Luckily I won’t have the problem of sitting in his empty room and sobbing quietly to myself whilst hugging one of his socks – his younger brother has taken it upon himself to move himself straight in…and I couldn’t resist phoning him the following day just to see how he was getting on, but he didn’t pick up. Sent me a text telling me how great it was and that he’d phone me later. He didn’t. Beginning of the end.

I did like this poem about a child leaving – very funny :-

Empty Nest

I like to have a tidy house. I like a bit of peace.
I quite like it when the neighbours never have to call the police.
And now my son has left for good, well, peace is what I’ve got
So I’m really not complaining, no, I’m really really not.

So I’m really not, I’m honestly not, I’m truly not upset
That my son has left his Mummy Bird to her lonely empty nest
Yes, I know I’m eating Farley’s Rusks and clutching a baby’s vest
And holding the photo of his scan against my heaving chest.
But I’m really not upset.

I never enjoyed the finding out that he’d started on the fags
Or discovering decomposing Cornish pasties in his bags
Those times I found towels festering, it made it hard to cope.
And I never got used to the fact that there were dirt streaks in the soap

So I’m definitely not, I’m actually not, I’m seriously not forlorn
That my child has found a new life, leaving me here all alons
I know I’m knitting mittens, while I sit here, with the phone,
Watching Postman Pat and Fireman Sam, then going to bed at dawn
But I’m definitely not forlorn.

I’m really enjoying the fridge now. The things I bought – still there!
No corner of his room piled with fermenting underwear.
No Eminem is booming through the ceiling, down the wall.
No size 11 trainers causing smog to fill the hall.

So I’m positively not, I’m manifestly not, I’m undeniably not bereft
That my child took off and left me in this very empty neft
Yes, I’m wearing his Arsenal pyjamas – haven’t washed them since he left
And although he took one teddy bear, I’m sleeping with the rest
But I’m positively not bereft.

I watch what I want on TV now. I can use the remote, if I like.
And there’s no one in the lounge applying oil to his bike
There’s no stink of mildewed sock seeping from under his bedroom door
And I do not have to fumigate the pillows any more

So I’m inarguably not, I’m incontrovertibly not, I’m indisputably not upset.
That he scarpered off and left me in this lonely empty nest.
And I think it’s so unfair that people say I am obsessed
Just ‘cause I’m sat in his Moses basket … with a dolly at my breast
So I’m inarguably not upset …