“Hear that?” I asked my wife late one night.
“What? I don’t hear anything,” she answered.
“Exactly,” I said, noting there was no 11 p.m. tuba, electric bass, guitar or singing coming from the other side of the house. Later that night, there would be no one banging cabinet doors to fix a 2 a.m. sandwich.
Our boys are both at college.
Don’t get me wrong, we love our boys. But the population at our home address has been halved. We are now empty nesters. The silence is both welcomed, yet deafening.
We’re proud of them and grateful to see those two baby birds spread their wings and leave the nest. They’re ready, too, each one excited to arrive on his college campus, move into their dorms, and start meeting people and mixing as people do in college life.
But, yeah. It’s much quieter.
And it’s compounded by the fact we lost our little dog — a dachshund/beagle mix — a few weeks before the boys’ departures. He was a good back porch companion and he barked to make sure the neighborhood deer kept moving down the alley on their nightly flower foraging rounds.
For my wife and I, it’s both really nice to have the house to ourselves and a bit unsettling. We have cooked some stay-at-home date night meals and enjoyed each other’s company, like when we were dating. No interruptions or last-minute running to the store for a piece of posterboard for an assignment made three weeks prior.
But there’s this period of adjustment getting used to the quiet again. It’s like that uneasiness those teen years of them staying out late and us having restless sleep wondering if they were OK before they made it home.
College is a rite of passage for the boys, for sure, but also one for the newly empty nested. I’ve seen social media posts of other parents and it’s definitely a big change after 18 years of parents’ lives revolving around their progeny.
Overall, we give it an “A” grade because we are enjoying that reconnecting time. We’ve grilled meats and veggies and had some nice local wines. We did that when the boys were here too, but now it seems more leisurely.
We’re not having to worry about going down the cereal aisle at the grocery store as much because we no longer board the teens who could eat a box of cereal in one sitting.
We’ve enjoyed not waking to find size 12 tennis shoes in the living room each morning, or dishes from midnight snacks in the sink.
We took Will up to the University of North Texas in Denton and got him moved into Bruce Hall, a dormitory directly across the street from the music building where he’ll do much of his studying and practicing. We lugged his tuba, keyboard, clothes, computer, and many other items up three flights of stairs on a hot Friday two weeks ago. We found where he will park his car and then made the fourth trip to a Target to make sure he had everything he needed to get the semester rolling. Christine teared up, and we left him as he had his first tuba section meeting that evening.
Esten, our oldest and one most traveled, was more of a minimalist. We moved him into Whitis Court on the northern end of the University of Texas campus. That dorm houses lots of exchange students, so he feels right at home in this global environment, as he spent his own exchange year in Germany.
He spent his next year with AmeriCorps doing service work, until it was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. This past summer, he made a road trip around the northeast to reconnect with some of his fellow exchange students and AmeriCorps team members.
Moving to his dorm, Esten fit everything into the back of his Prius — didn’t even have to fold the back seats down — and it took us all of two trips from his car to his room. We left him — no tears that time, as he had made two major exoduses before — and we went and celebrated at one of our favorite Austin Mexican food restaurants.
It’s a time of change, but welcomed change. They are starting their adult lives and entering the on-ramp to self-sufficiency. From diapers to dorm refrigerators, there have been 18 years of memories. And no matter how quiet it gets, we’re grateful those will be with us forever.
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