Filling up the empty nest…

Good Friday was the longest day ever. Not just for Jesus, but for me.

My son – my 26-year-old “baby” – and his girlfriend were flying in from France for the Easter weekend. I’d bought the tickets, more of a gift to me than them because I was that desperate to see at least one of my far-flung children.

They were due to land at half-10 that night.

The minutes limped by, then he sent me a message from Paris saying their plane had been delayed by two hours. No! They wouldn’t arrive on Friday at all, but in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Back in the nest…for a little while

Finally they were here though, and I could hug my boy tight, and know that everything was okay for a little while.

Once again, we could wipe down the dusty teapot, because making a pot for one seems pointless but when there are three tea-drinkers together then there is nothing more comforting, more right.

My children have always loved a cuppa.

All that was missing was my other man-child, married in Cape Town, living his best life half the world away. Sometimes I put his address into Google Maps. We’re 12 697km apart.

If I were to start walking now, I’d get there in 2 771 hours. Just give me a minute while I lace up my hiking boots…

Empty nest syndrome

It’s funny: I never thought I’d have empty nest syndrome.

My children came and went over several years – travelling in the Far East, across Europe, working in America, living in a flat down the road – and I enjoyed the quiet times, happy that my boys were happy, that they weren’t dying in gutters, that their wings were working. That I did okay.

Me and my boys against the world

I’d been a single mum for a long time, since I was a teenager, and that feeling never left. Part of me was always alone; it was always me and my boys against the world.

Now it’s just me.

And Himself.

And two big, boisterous dogs. And many friends.

And my art studies, and work to do, and varied interests, and I speak to my mum nearly every day, and I reel now when I think that I once left her, too, whisking her grandchildren to another continent. It’s how parenthood turns out.

Still, the absence of my children sits like stones in my chest.