A night out at the movies, and a strangely quiet house
“This feels weird,” my wife said as we drove to the movie theatre on a recent Saturday night, blissfully free of our children. “Like we are doing something wrong.”
We had been on these excursions before, of course. Our daughters are 17 and 12 and now perfectly capable of managing on their own, at least for the few hours it takes to watch a movie or shovel overpriced chow down our throats. We’ve also had the good fortune of having a selection of grandparents available as cheap and easy babysitters through the years.
But leaving your kids with other people to do fun stuff comes with a certain kind of parental guilt. I feel bad when they’re at home watching their iPads and eating the same old food while me and missus are out whooping it up (relatively speaking). When they were small, I knew that even the most industrious grandparent was going to end the evening on the verge of exhaustion: they’re my progeny, I know what they are capable of.
On this particular evening, however, the kids were off doing stuff they wanted to be doing. The older one was off with friends, using my car to explore the outer reaches of teenage freedom and the limits of gas consumption — how far can I go until Dad gets mad? The younger one was at a sleepover at a friend’s place, eating copious amounts of candy, scrolling social media and giggling until all hours.
In other words, they were as happy to be away from us as we were to be free of them. Like my wife said, weird.
Certainly, life with children gets somewhat easier as they get older and become more capable of fulfilling their own basic needs like going to the bathroom, feeding themselves and cleaning up when reminded with a certain vocal ferocity. But trying to sit down and watch a movie with a bottle of wine on a Friday night means being prepared for an endless stream of interruptions, loud noises and general chaos. Even now, there’s no such thing as sustained peace and quiet.
Unless they aren’t around. And that was the second part of the evening after the movie finished: instead of doing our best to extend our last moments of freedom with a coffee shop visit, dessert run or late-night drink, we just went home to an empty house. It was fantastic.
Even though it’s still a ways off — I did not enjoy this week’s story of a New York couple suing their deadbeat, 30-year-old son to get out of the house — it’s increasingly possible to envision a time when life sans ever-present children is the norm and not the exception. Not quite sure how I feel about that.
Of course, the kids were back early the next day, tired and hungry, the car gliding into the driveway on fumes. They exploded through the door within minutes of each other, bringing chaos and noise back to the house.
“Did you miss me?” the younger one asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
And it was almost true.
Drew dreams of being an empty-nester but gets depressed just thinking about it. He can be reached at drew@drewedwards.ca
It’s increasingly possible to envision a time when life sans ever-present children is the norm and not the exception. Not quite sure how I feel about that.