21st Century Empty Nest

It's a bittersweet event when the last child of the family leaves for college.
Never mind that your daughter is a sophisticated young woman with a black belt in karate. Never mind that your son is a strapping 6-foot, 2-inch athletic type. You still worry about their welfare in the wider world.

You've been through it with their older sibling(s), and they survived. They're alive and healthy; maybe they're even gainfully employed by this time.

Still, even though you worried as each one went off to seek enlightenment and wild parties at an establishment of higher learning, you always had younger ones at home to keep you focused and occupied.

When the last one leaves, it's the empty nest syndrome.

Or, it would be an empty nest if they'd take all of their memorabilia and high tech equipment with them. In your attic or basement is at least one antique (at least ten years old) computer, a couple of monitors, boxes and boxes of video games, computer cable, strange looking circuit boards, and other assorted paraphernalia. You have no use for any of it; a good deal of it is beyond your comprehension. But your children have assured you that all of it is VERY IMPORTANT. And no way are you going to be the one to throw out their seventeen boxes of hockey and baseball cards or the comic books, each pristinely encased in its own plastic sleeve. And, of course, all the electronic stuff. They may not care about the stuffed animals from babyhood, but have strong sentimental bonds to their first computer.

Still, what are middle-aged parents for, if not to store the belongings of their grown offspring, until said offspring have become settled enough to claim and house it themselves?

Years ago, my mother-in-law confided to me the three criteria she used to judge that the time was right to entrust boxes of childhood keepsakes and family photos to each of her youngsters: a stable marriage, the birth of a child, and purchase of a home. (One of my husband's siblings still has not met all these criteria and isn't likely to, but six out of seven isn't bad.)

Our own sons are in their twenties. Soon after the younger one graduated and was permanently employed, we breathed a sigh of relief that both had gotten through school without any complications of illegal drugs, pregnancy, or arrests and were now permanently employed in full-time jobs with no student loans left to pay off.

It was a premature sigh of relief. Within a year the older one quit his lucrative, reliable job to enter grad school. My pleas for him to attend school part-time while keeping his job, were gently, but firmly declined. It was absolutely necessary to attend law school full time and amass an enormous debt while doing so.

As for the younger one, his memories of being a poor struggling student are still recent enough to keep him at his job for a while. He even drops hints of being in the market for a house, but so far that house has not materialized.

In our basement and attic, there are aisles between the stacks of boxes. Adding to the collection is my penchant for printing and saving e-mails. My sons are both proudly "paperless," but I prefer hard copies. (Good thing I have an old-fashioned address book too, for those occasions when one of my sons wants the address or phone number of a family member. For some reason, that sort of information always seems to get lost in their cyberspaces.)

In short, the basement and attic are overflowing. We are two old people with one old dog and about fifty boxes of our children's memories. I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Learn more about this author, Marcia Siekkinen.
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