Confessions of an empty nester

So, as every parent knows, there comes a time when their offspring will leave the safe secure harbour of their side to travel the seven seas fraught with all sorts of hazards. This momentous event has been given all sorts of fancy and important sounding names because of the distress it evokes: ‘Empty Nest’ syndrome, ‘separation anxiety’ etc, etc. For some parents this comes ideologically, when their child, all grown up, leaves home to study further/intern/work/other. For some, it comes metaphorically speaking — like me.

My child left me two nights ago, distraught and tearful, when she went finally into her own room, to sleep. You might want to know that my child is five years old and the distraught and tearful one was me.

“I’m a big girl now,” she announced matter-of-factly, just before springing this shock attack on me. “I want to sleep in my own room.” It was a heartbreakingly profound moment, but my husband who was also present, didn’t see it that way at all. Without waiting for my melodramatic wailing to start, he said, very casually, “Sure, you are. And of course you can sleep in your own room now.”

A bit of background for those parents who were born perfect, and therefore would have trained their little ones to sleep on their own the moment they arrived from the womb: my style of raising my little one cannot be straight jacketed into a term, but if it were, it would be closest to ‘loving neglect.’ Or maybe, less glamorous: ‘trial and error’. Because, you see, though I followed all the child rearing books and the sundry matron advice to the letter, reality has a way of crashing the party most times. And whilst I had started off with the cradle in the baby room, it slowly inched its way into ours when she began falling sick with alarming regularity.

Even after the cradle went away, I could not bring myself to part with her company, call me a wuss for shirking early disciplining.

As working moms do, I crave more moments with her: time is so precious, if it could be distilled in a bottle to preserve it, I would gladly do it, temper tantrums, runny nose, the whole nine yards. So she stayed, cosy and close, sleeping between us, and we all lived happily ever after (at least I did, not sure my husband yelling, when she kicked hard in sleep, or wet the bed in the early years, would agree). Until two days ago, when my world came crashing down.

My small angel, who would turn to me for everything was now exerting her independence with new found authority, and I had no choice but to give in. Of course I knew she would go away one day, but it was sometime far away in the unforeseeable future, to be accessed only in the fullness of time. Not now, not quite yet, not so suddenly. I was beside myself. But no amount of pleading (by me) would help. My husband, I must add, was most unsympathetic to my grievances — hardheartedly he assured me she would not fall off the bed in the other room, nor sleepwalk, and surely I was old enough not to believe in monsters anymore. Most uncharitable of him, considering my delicate state of mind. It was a traumatic night. I would know, I was up making sure, not quite on the hour every hour, but close enough. As it turned out, Tariecka had a restful night, the first of many to follow, so far away from me. It was I who was (and continue to be) the mess, thank you for asking.

Gauri Sinh parents a five-year-old human and an eleven-year-old canine. She also happens to edit DNA After Hrs