Good reads for empty nesters

I don't only read novels about the empty nest!   But it's a thrill when you find the subject touched on with great sensitivity and insight, as in these two novels.

Insights and echoes for empty nesters

The first is Olive Kitteridge by the Pullitzer prize-winning writer Elizabeth Strout.  In one of the stories that make up this wonderful novel, it's the father, not the mother, who suffers most from his sons leaving. It precipitates a crisis which threatens to shatter his marriage. Here's a taste:

'He had thought Bonnie might have a bad empty-nest time of it, that he’d have to watch out for her. He knew, everyone knew, of at least one family these days where the kids grew up and the wife just took off,  lickety-split. But Bonnie seemed calmer, full of a new energy…...

Something else happened the year Derrick went off to college. While their bedroom life had slowed considerably, Harmon had accepted this, had sensed for some time that Bonnie was “accommodating” him. But one night he turned to her in bed, and she pulled away. After a long moment she said quietly, “Harmon, I think I’m just done with that stuff.”'

 

'Brooklyn' - a story of Emigration

It's hard for any parent when a child moves an ocean away - as I discovered recently when talking to parents at the American School in London. But in the fifties, when Brooklyn is set,  a time when there was no Skype, and phoning home cost an arm and a leg, it was much, much harder for parents. And it was hard for kids too - it still is. 

The second novel, Brooklyn by Colm Toibin,  is at times an unbearably sad story about emigrating,  written from the adult child's point of view (surprisingly not often heard in empty nest discussions).   

Kids Just Boomeranged back? Ten tips to cope

If your child has just graduated and moved back home, it's as challenging for them as it is for you.
But what no one tells you is that it can also be a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other - and appreciate each other - as adults.

Here are a few tips to keep life sweet (ish).
But first, some common mistakes parents make (I know, I know…..)

MISTAKES BOOMERANG PARENTS MAKE

• Don't do his washing!  Encourage your child to live as independently as possible
• Don't take it to heart if they criticise you for not using organic polenta. Ask them to do a household shop with a budget to understand the choices you make about food.
• Don't forget to discuss the new status quo with your partner. Mothers and fathers often have different views about money, independence -  and apron strings! -  so aim for a united compromise.
• Don't expect to lay down the law.  From now on it's about respecting each other as adults.
• No curfews. Again, this comes down to mutual consideration.

HOW BOOMERANG PARENTS CAN KEEP LIFE SWEET

• Come to an agreement about how long they're likely to stay.  Make it clear the date can be renegotiated when the time's up. Setting a time limit helps overcome the emotional uncertainty parents often find hard - because you don't know when you'll have to say goodbye again.
• Renegotiate ground rules to pre-empt the most common sources of tension: noise and mess.
• Allow each other privacy and space - it's even more important now than when they were teenagers.
• Let each other know when you're going out for the evening or away for the weekend, and give as much warning as you can.
• Work out what's a reasonable financial contribution for them to make.

More advice:

my article 'How to Live with your Boomerang students'  in  High50  Don't Bite Your Tongue by Ruth Nemzoff

Feeling sad about your empty nest? Make something

No skills required!

I recommend this to anyone who is feeling sad about their empty nest: make something. It could be a photo album or a collage of favourite family pics, a patchwork cushion or a rag rug.  You don't have to be good at sewing. The key is that you use clothes your kids once wore (I'm the kind of sad person who can't throw this stuff away, so I've got bagsful), or family photographs and mementoes.

The rag rug I'm  making with my husband - using fabric from the clothes our kids wore when they were younger

Leaving home tradition

It's not a new idea. Apparently it's a tradition in some cultures to give adult children a home-made quilt when they leave home or get married.  The friend who told me about this plans to hide secret messages in the bedcover she's making for her son. That way she can say all the soppy stuff she's too embarrassed to say to his face.  The day he flew off on his gap year she made a photo collage of her son's life, from pregnancy to picnics to teenage parties and hospital visits. She sobbed while she was doing it and felt a lot better afterwards.

Face your empty nest

It's a good way of acknowledging the past - and accepting that it is past  - while creating something for the future. But it's also painful!   Sorting through the toddlers' dresses and teenage T-shirts always makes me feel sad and nostalgic.  You can't help thinking, how did that happen? How did someone who is now  6'2" fit into those stripy leggings his grandma knitted? For me clothes, like scent, trigger memories like nothing else.

Face your new direction

But it's cathartic too - therapeutic, even.  The whole process of sorting and deciding which fabrics to put together is deeply satisfying; it feels like a very positive thing to do.

Create your own heirloom

There are times when it feels a bit self-indulgent.  But when you're facing the empty nest there are times  when you need to indulge your need for a good cry - it  really helps.   And it's not just about wallowing in the past: it's a very practical step forward. It's  a way of coming to terms with the passing of an era, and with your feelings about that, while creating something steeped in memories - an heirloom, even -  which celebrates your child's new direction as well as your own.

If you want to make a rag rug it's dead easy - and there are courses and books to show you how. 

Books: 
More Rag Rugs by Jenni Stuart-Anderson - who also runs fantastic courses 

Making Rag Rugs by Clare Hubbard

Which top ten life skills would you teach at GCSE?

This question was asked on BBC Radio Gloucestershire yesterday, in response to a report just out which recommends a new GCSE in life skills to prepare teenagers for the working world....and, well, for life.
I have my doubts about exams in perseverance, self control, the ability to bounce back from set backs - and all the other so called 'soft skills' the report talks about.  And I'm not sure these things are best learnt in after school clubs -  surely this is the stuff of life -  real, family life with all its ups and downs?

So I reckon it would be much better to teach practical skills - the kind of thing that makes teenagers genuinely self-sufficient, emotionally and otherwise.  OK, I know, why should already overburdened schools have to teach this stuff?  Of course they shouldn't have to. Us parents should be imparting it - just as my dad taught me to paint and decorate and my mum taught me to use a sewing machine. It was part of life.

Here are the top ten skills I wish I'd taught my kids (and failed miserably, mostly)

1.  How to change a plug/fuse and how not to electrocute yourself.

2.  How often to change  sheets and wash  towels.
(One friend of mine was horrified to discover that her daughter hadn't changed her sheets once in the whole of the first term at uni.)

3.   How to clean the bath, cooker etc and which products to use where.

4.  Food hygiene.  Why it's important to clean the chopping board after cutting up raw meat. How to defrost, why you can't refreeze etc. Sell-by dates and when to ignore them

5. How to drive. I'm a rubbish driver myself so I know how important this is.

6.  How to mend clothes

7.  How to feed yourself on £20 a week.

8.  How not to shrink the socks your mum knitted you (OK that was my fault).

9.  How to look after a plant.

10. And last but definitely not least: How to be kind and think of others, especially your mum.

Christmas book ideas for Empty Nest mums and dads

These novels aren't just for empty nesters, but they explore issues that are all too familiar to families going through this dramatic transition in life. Great presents for parents!

And if you're looking for non-fiction support and advice, there's always my book The Empty Nest: How to Survive and Stay Close to Your Adult Child!

These are my eight top reads - great for dads as well as mums.

* Us
David Nicholls
The ultimate empty nest meltdown.  And proof, if it was needed,  that the empty nest affects men too.

* Olive Kitteridge
 by the Pullitzer prize-winning writer Elizabeth Strout.  In one of the stories that make up this wonderful novel, it's the father, not the mother, who suffers most from his sons leaving. It precipitates a crisis which threatens to shatter his marriage. Here's a taste:

'Something else happened the year Derrick went off to college. While their bedroom life had slowed considerably, Harmon had accepted this, had sensed for some time that Bonnie was “accommodating” him. But one night he turned to her in bed, and she pulled away. After a long moment she said quietly, “Harmon, I think I’m just done with that stuff.”'

* Brooklyn - a story of Emigration
Colm Toibin

It's hard for any parent when a child moves an ocean away.  But in the Fifties communication and the cost of travel made everything much harder for parents and kids. This often unbearably sad story about emigrating sees things through the adult child's eyes  - a viewpoint surprisingly rare  in empty nest discussions.

 * Freedom
Jonathan Franzen

This wonderful novel is about so much more than the issues facing empty nesters.  But at its heart is a raw, painful portrait of a family and a mid-life marriage in crisis.


* Second Honeymoon
Joanna Trollope

Classic Trollope: gripping, poignant and hits the nail on the head time and time again. Here empty nest mum Edie clears out her departed son's bedroom:

'You come to a house, Edie thought, carrying almost more life, more people, than you can manage. And then, over time, almost everything you have carried in begins to leak out again, inexorably, and you are left clutching fallen curtains at ten o'clock on a Saturday morning instead of applying yourself, with all your new reserves of no longer required maternal energy, to quality leisure.'


* The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year
Sue Townsend

All the humour and caustic wit you'd expect from Townsend, with some brilliantly irritating characters (Poppy is classic) but it's touching too.


* While I Was Gone
Sue Miller

A thriller - sort of - in which a murder from the protagonist's hippy past comes back to haunt her and tests her relationship with her husband and daughters to breaking point.


* The Empty Nesters
Nina Bell

Three women have shared school runs and summer holidays since their children were babies. When their kids leave home, secrets and lies are exposed which threaten their marriages - and their friendship.

Every time we say goodbye....

You'd think I would be used to saying goodbye by now  -  after all, it's nearly ten years since my eldest left home.  But when I waved our youngest off to the US yesterday morning I still felt the same old painful pang.  That moment of parting, as your child walks away from you and into his or her new life, always makes me sad. There's something specially disconcerting about knowing that the person who used to be your baby is hurtling thousands of miles across the globe. It just feels wrong to be so disconnected, so helpless if they need you.

But at least the strange limbo of the past 24 hours before parting is over - that's another thing I still struggle with. It's so hard to settle when you're trying to make the most of someone's company yet missing them already, trying not to get tetchy or nag about the lack of plans; trying not to sound like my own mother, basically.

When it comes to saying goodbye one lesson I have learnt is not to eek out the agony by hanging around in the airport and waiting for the final glimpse of that precious back disappearing through security. Instead, at 5.30 am we hugged in the drizzling rain outside the car and drove away.  But as we let ourselves in to the silent house the phone was already ringing. She'd lost her wallet and couldn't get on the plane without it. So by 6.30 am we were back at the airport saying goodbye all over again. It was probably easier the second time round.....

In so many ways life has become oddly fuller since our nest emptied, but there will always be moments of sadness and nostalgia.  These days, thankfully, they are moments rather than days or even weeks.  Of course I felt sad going home to the dregs of comfortable chaos in my daughter's bedroom, with the bedside light still burning.  I admit I couldn't bear to switch it off for a while,  and I even put on her old jumper, with that lovely smell of cigarettes and Stella.  And every time a plane flew over I thought about her arriving in Chicago with nowhere to stay. But by the time her text came saying 'Made it!' I was already moving back into my own new life.

Post-Christmas regrets....

One thing I found really sad this Christmas was buying presents for my kids.  It  never used to be a problem, when letters to Santa were meticulously detailed, and you were bound to end up with at least one thing that made their Christmas Day special. And as they got older you knew just from living with them what their hearts most desired.

But now that we don't live together I feel completely out of touch with their interests and tastes - even my daughter's.  For the last few years I've rushed round buying shirts and bike gismos and DVDs that I hoped might be just the ticket,  but which the boys acknowledged politely and took straight back to Uniglo and HMV.

So this Christmas I gave up.  I decided not to stress myself out searching obsessively for the perfect gift, but to give simple, useful stuff: underpants (oops),  novels, wine,  recipe books (the brilliant Ottolenghi) plus a selection of hard-to-find Middle Eastern ingredients.  All a bit impersonal perhaps - and I could see the kids were puzzled.

But for me there was a big bonus:  all my energies were focussed on what matters more as the kids get older - not the annual present fest but just enjoying being together. These days it's really rare that all three are at home at the same time, and in the past Christmas has slipped through my fingers in a fug of distractions. Not this year: we played poker and chose our top tunes of 2012 into the wee small hours. And I made one New Year's Resolution: to give them what they really want for their birthdays in 2013. I just have to work out a way of finding out what it is.