A temporarily less empty nest
Upon reflection, it’s a good thing I didn’t sell the house last year.
My mind was made up, and when Ari moved out last April, I commenced being true to my word and, as readers know, dragged everyone in my realm through the renovating and staging process for weeks. And then I didn’t sell.
Ari showed up a few weeks ago with a basket of laundry, a big-screen TV and a six-month-old kitten.
He’s apartment shopping again, but in the meantime, I told him to park his furniture in storage and move home for a bit. His independence is important to both of us, and I told him I wouldn’t cramp his style as long as he went back to putting out the blue bins every week. I have no style to cramp.
I told him if he wanted any particular food, to just put it on the list on the counter. Ten minutes later, the list had 11 new things on it.
Frankie the Kitten is tormenting my other three, and Mama L’s daycare is back in business. As I type this, he is flinging a Werther’s butterscotch around the room and occasionally chewing on my ankles. Frankie, not Ari. I’m sure he’ll collapse soon into a long nap, in preparation for watching hockey tonight — that actually could be either of them — with a rec room full of kids I’m so familiar with, it’s like time stood still.
“Pull your bed,” I hollered to Ari as I passed his room with a full basket of laundry.
“What? It’s fine.”
“Don’t be gross. It’s been over a week,” I told him.
“I know. So it’s fine.”
I looked at him over my glasses. He pulled the bed. He’s rapidly become accustomed to the decided uptick in linens and towels that has taken place in his absence. He may be in his former bedroom, but it looks nothing like the room he left behind. During the redecorating process, I purchased things that could be called “decor.”
At night, I hear Frankie throwing the decor all around the room.
A few kids here the other night for dinner somehow turned into seven; as the music and chatter escalated, I watched my two sons laughing on the couch, begging me to make them snacks.
“Do it for your boys,” they beseeched me, the threat of starvation now very real, dinner having been over for two hours.
My sons have reached that age where childhood bickering has been left behind, and they’ve learned to pool their resources — making sad-eyed entreaties to their mother — to share in the spoils. And so I did what everyone in that room knew I would do, and started making snacks.
I glanced at the clock, and into the faces of these young people I have known and loved for years.
“It’s after midnight. It’s a school night. Go home,” I told them.
They gathered up their belongings and their puppies and headed out into the winter night. All except for Ari, who scooped up Frankie and headed upstairs.
I know he won’t be here for long, and Leafs games won’t dominate my rec room every other night. My front hallway won’t look like an ad for Blundstones, I won’t be asking which girl left her scarf behind, I’ll stop calculating dinner to have enough for Ari to take for his lunch, and I won’t have a kitten attacking my ponytail as I work.
What I will have is the good fortune of liking my sons as much as I love them, and the knowledge that this house is still their home.
Even if just a little while.