Follow the Dirt Road in Your Soul to Humbug Mountain

This Empty Nest Stuff is for Birds Only

By Carol Mell, 8-11-07

	The twins, Emily and Aileen were home for just a few days this summer. They are doing fine in college. So am I, I think.

After 17 years of work and worry I finally got the peace and quiet I wished for when my twins left home.

The house is unnerving as a tomb. Though I rue the day my sweet, innocent girls were introduced to “Iron Maiden,” the silence boiling up from the basement is deafening.

Over the roaring silence, I can still hear that the pretzels, normally consumed within one half hour of touchdown, are restless in their cellophane bag.

My dog, not much brighter than a pretzel, wanders from room to room looking for something she lost, she can’t remember what.

Master Splinter, the pet rat, lies listless in his hammock. No one fixes him peeled grapes and carrots. He hasn’t had an unauthorized pretzel all week, poor thing, and his eyes are clouding over with depression and lethargy.

By this afternoon hour, the twins have usually blown in the front door in a clatter of chatter—Aileen in her red wool hat, mismatched socks and flowered skirt and Emily in her baggy T-shirt and jeans trudging in her boots as if the whole world were upon her.

Not until Emily spins is she fit for conversation. She has been a spinner since the day we hauled a broken-down bar stool into the kitchen and she turned it into a merry-go-round, churning at speeds that would make a skater dizzy. This five-year meditation she performed for hours a day until the seat came off her stool and she was forced to twirl on her feet wearing a beaten path into the carpet. “It’s how I think,” she used to say at three. Nowadays, accompanied by a raucous mixture of hard rock and Celtic music, Emily spins herself out in time for “The Simpsons.”

Today, the wind whistles through the house and the dog barks every time a car goes by, like she never heard one before. I haven’t tripped over shoes or Aileen’s electric guitar in the hallway. The phone isn’t ringing, either.

I actually miss driving lessons, a task I have concluded mothers are constitutionally unfit to undertake.

“Why are you so nervous,” Aileen asked on our third trip out. “You’re a lot worse than Dad.”

We paid for driving school, nothing more than a cram session to pass the written test. The driving instructors, with all the confidence born of a passenger-side brake took them out for a few sessions in the parking lot and one long drive up to Questa. That’s what you get for $200.

The state requires learners to spend another 50 hours behind the wheel with someone else. Multiply that by two and I’m elected to spend 100 hours of painful migraine-and-ulcer-producing quality time with my children. 

Terrified, I took Aileen on an errand. “You’re doing fine,” I intoned to myself as much as to the new driver as we made our way down the road with three honking SUVs breathing down our necks.

“You’re doing fine, just fine,” I said as we entered the parking lot. Spying four spaces open I directed her to park there. She headed in. “Good aim,” I thought. “Slow down,” I said then yelled as the car accelerated through the parking lane right into a cyclone fence.

“AGHH,” I whimpered.

“Relax, Mom,” my unruffled daughter said. “I just forgot which pedal was which. I’m fine.”

I was anything but fine. The fence pole was doubled over.

Once, at a party, I shouted out the question, “How many of you mothers taught your kids to drive?” A groan floated up. “My husband had to do it,” one cried. “I was a nervous wreck,” confessed another. I know one mother who did it but she is a movie star with enough chutzpah to steer a manned space rocket and keep smiling. Regular mothers are not genetically constructed to be the primary purveyors of driving instruction.

“Oh, Mom, calm down.” Emily scolded. “Dad is so much better at this than you are. Why are you so nervous?

“Because,” I answered, “since you were born my sole purpose in life has been to keep you alive. I didn’t let you hang yourself from a tree or jump into the shallow end. I never left you alone in the tub and I made you look both ways when crossing the street. I didn’t allow soda or chewing gum so how do you expect me to relax in a death machine?”

Now, when they are not here, my instincts are like boxers without a match, like lifeguards with an empty pool, like a plucked chicken without a pot and this is only a test. I’ve failed miserably since taking them to the Girls Film School in Santa Fe for two weeks. I wish I’d practiced this empty nest stuff sooner; it’s for the birds.

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