Mindy Hammond

Every week in S Magazine With her daughters having flown the nest, our columnist is in a bit of a flap…

Many parents across the UK have found themselves in an unfamiliar position of late. They’ve spent 18 or 19 years tending to the needs of their offspring, from soothing them during the painful teething stages, through the trials and tribulations of the terrible twos, to the bruises, grazed knees and visits to A&E and the trickiness of adolescence. Now, after devoting so many years to their care, loving the very bones of them, the visit to Ikea is done, bags have been packed and they’ve been deposited at uni.

I know some parents will have breathed a sigh of relief – perhaps they’ve looked forward to becoming “empty nesters” and have planned impromptu weekends away without worrying the kids will have a “gathering” in their absence and wreck the house? But surely they’ll miss the presence of youth in the home?

Yes, their bedrooms are tidy and you can see the entirety of the carpet for the first time in years. It’s a joy to clean the bathroom, knowing that it will stay clean (and the loo roll will actually remain on the holder). But these small joys are fleeting.

The weekly shop has to change too

– it took a few weeks before I stopped automatically filling the trolley with Izzy’s avocados and gluten-free pizza. The crisp drawer is still full of Willow’s favourite prawn cocktail flavour and the cupboard is overflowing with tins of tuna and sweetcorn, even though she isn’t here to relish a tuna melt. After feeding four for 20-plus years, the default on food remains “family size”.

The dogs are enjoying leftover “extras” in their bowls, but although cottage pie, chicken casserole, scrambled eggs or quiche may be met with drooling jowls, this is neither cost-effective, nor recommended by canine nutritionists.

I miss my trips up to the top floor every night to kiss the girls goodnight and the change in activity has left Ketchup confused. Her night-time ritual of haring up the stairs with me to receive cuddles from them has come to an abrupt end. She meows at me, wondering why the lights are off upstairs, and in her despair, she has changed her sleeping habits – no longer happy to act as a foot warmer at the bottom of the bed, she has commandeered a pillow, where she sulks until dawn.

There may be parking spaces a-plenty, now the girls’ two hatchbacks are gone, but space on the drive is no compensation for the hole left in my heart.

I’m not enjoying the quiet and the tidiness is unnerving. There are no hoodies on chairs, no shoes scattered across the floor, no backlog of washing, leaving me with too much time on my hands – and no one to eat the cake I now have time to bake.

So many of us operate like human dynamos for many years – my day would start at 6.30am and rarely finish before 10pm, when I’d finally head for bed with the house in some semblance of order.

Phone calls were made on the return leg of the three-hour school run, emails and office work shoehorned between housework, supermarket shopping and animal husbandry. And we get used to it, it’s our “norm”. Until it isn’t.

Suddenly, there’s no need for speed and I can laze in my bed until 8 in the morning, enjoy leisurely walks with the dogs, ride my wonderful horse.

But I miss seeing my bleary-eyed, pyjama-clad daughters in the late morning; I even miss the bickering over what I’m cooking for supper. There’s nobody to watch Bake Off or SAS: Who Dares Wins with. And crying at a rom-com just isn’t the same on your own (although the dogs are always ready with a sympathetic lick).

We text, we Facetime, we speak – and it’s wonderful to know they’re thriving and embracing the next chapter of their lives. But we can’t wrestle, hug, dance around the kitchen, or play with the dogs, and I miss the sound of their laughter echoing around the place.

I am lucky – neither of the girls have a good relationship with laundry and they love a Sunday roast. So my washing machine is ready, the potatoes are itching to be roasted, and I’m counting the days until my little tornadoes return.