Your kids are the greatest love affair of your life, and that love is unconditional … Although wait, on second thoughts, there are a few conditions. No child must ever be allowed to take up the bagpipes, drums or descant recorder. Come meal times there are two options – spag bol or adoption. No mother should have to teach a child to drive while simultaneously going through the menopause. And, most important of all, progeny must be out the door by 24.
Without a doubt, the two nicest words in the English language are “empty” and “nest”. And yet my kitchen is constantly full of female friends weeping into their wine about how much they will miss their kids when they leave for university, flat shares or gap year travels.
Michelle Obama has joined the chorus, revealing that she’s going to counselling to help her adjust to life as an “empty nester” now that Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, are fledging.On Jay Shetty’s podcast,the former first lady said: “I’m in therapy right now because I’m transitioning, you know? … I’m 60 years old, I’ve finished a really hard thing in my life with my family intact, I’m an empty nester, my girls are in – you know, they’ve been launched! … This is a whole other phase in life for me.”
The difficulty with adjusting to this new phase is that the psychological umbilical cord is still firmly attached. For days after my kids flew the nest, I’ll admit I wandered around their bedrooms, touching old toys and storybooks, feeling totally bereft. The silence roared at me. But this ennui began to evaporate as I realised the redecoration potential. Would I turn their old bedrooms into a gym and a study, a craft area or a walk-in-wardrobe …?
And that’s not the only joy. Imagine this for a moment – you open your cupboard and your clothes are not ransacked. Nor do they reek of beer fumes, bonfire smoke or rave sweat. Your expensive hair conditioner is not tipped over in the shower, dribbling slowly down the drain. You open your fridge and there is food. No lipstick marks on the milk bottle, or empty packets put back into the pantry. Plus there is nobody standing before that full pantry moaning “there’s nothing to eat in this house”. In fact, you can now hang up your cooking apron. Nesting mothers roast whole schools of salmon and flocks of lambs; now you can just wear your finger to the bone ordering take away.
Your hairdryer is where you left it. As is your phone charger and TV remote. Your purse is full. Your car is where you parked it, and actually contains petrol. When you leave your pristine house for work in the morning, you do not come home to find a flotsam and jetsam of dropped wet towels, apple cores, bike helmets and random teenage school friends crashed out on your couch.
Best of all, you can now have sex loudly. So as not to “give the ick” to embarrassed offspring, parents are forced to endure muffled sotto voce nooky, limiting expressions of enthusiasm to the odd strangled, asthmatic gasp. Well, now you can give full vocal vent to your joy. Michelle doesn’t need therapy; she needs to have sex in every room of her empty house – in the kitchen, on the landing, atop the washing machine. She and Barack need to run around the house naked. Yodelling. With antlers on their heads.
When the Obama girls move out, yes, their empty bedrooms will yawn at Michelle. She won’t be able to walk past without a shiver of sadness and the odd sob. But rest assured, just when an empty nester is beginning to ponder colour charts, one kid will ring to say he’s popping home for the weekend for “some pampering”, and the other is planning on coming back to stay a few days later to do laundry and “pick up a few things”. Another bit of advice for Michelle – in the case of missing linen, postage stamps and vintage wine bottles, a parent has the right to search and seizure.
So, if you’re a new empty nester, do not feel despondent about this next phase. You’ve hatched and dispatched. Give yourself a parenting medal, and now go make proper use of the kitchen counter.
Kathy Lette is a comedy writer and novelist. Her latest book isThe Revenge Club