I wrote thise when my daughter left home - my son had already gone but I still had my daughter - then she left to adventures anew. Putting it down in words helped to alleviate the empty nest syndrome.

YOUR CHILDREN’S YEARS

Your children’s years are the most trying and exacting years of a mother’s life and never go away, no matter how old they are.
Gone are those cute, moppet-haired, interesting little beings that tottered around on dimply legs. The little ones you ‘oohed and aahed’ over for so long, with their wide-eyed innocence and adorable sounds of ‘mummy’ coming out of their sweet little mouths. The ones you would have done anything for and have. The ones you administered to in the dead of night and read the same stories to over and over again. The ones you tucked up in bed, made meals for, bathed and nursed and took to kindy for the very first time and came home feeling like the world’s worst mother.
The child you encouraged and cajoled and spent hour upon hour pacing the floor with them in your arms, whilst your eyes felt like someone had thrown acid at. Inwardly, silently screaming to yourself ‘if only they would go to sleep, I could still get another hour in bed. Please God, please. I’ll be good. Just let them go to SLEEP!’
Without warning, without any sign it was taking place, your little cherub then turned into the most foul, strangely-dressed, smelly, obscenely-mannered lout or loutess. Standing before you is someone you hardly recognise, even if it had its name painted on its forehead and a cardboard sign around its neck informing the onlooker that he/she belongs to the Farmington household at no 3 Cory Drive, Wellington.
Their gunked, funked hair is teased into the latest style and their skirts are the size of a tea towel. Make-up is slathered over acne-ridden faces and high-shine gloss plastered over their lips which resemble pumped bicycle tyres greased with oil. Their school uniform is tarted up so it only bears the slightest resemblance to the school’s policy of what a nice young girl/boy should wear to enhance the school’s policy.
Socks have no staying power and lie like limp slugs around their ankles, and the upper part of their shoes part company with their soles. Shirts have unrecognisable stains down their fronts, and jumpers display frayed hems and sleeves.
They have discovered a new language which is made up of a series of grunts. Ask them a question and you will be regaled with a series of inhuman noise that sound like a camel having a bad day. If you are lucky they will shrug their shoulders and walk away from you.
Their backs are bent like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, carrying a load even an ass couldn’t manage. Do they need all those books to get them through the day? Their healthy diet consists of those small bags of chips you get in Pak n Save. You know the ones, the large bags containing series of smaller ones, just enough, you work out standing in the middle of the aisle, to last them the whole week; and fizzy drinks, pizza and hamburger and chips. You place apples and bananas and healthy sandwiches in their school bags, only to find a sludgy mess in the bottom at the end of the day – or week!
Suddenly their food intake competes with someone working out for the next Olympic Games in weightlifting. Times like those you need a fridge with a padlock. Why don’t they make them, you ask yourself?
There they are, bless their little cotton socks, gazing into the fridge, one hand on the open door and shuffling their feet; the other hand rooting around amongst the scraps of food you bought yesterday, thinking it would last a lifetime, at least till the end of the week. Don’t make me laugh!
There they stand, gazing with utter seriousness into the fridge, looking for Nirvana, only instead they realise they’ve found .
They slam the fridge shut which makes you think there’s been a .6 earthquake, and then go and slam a few cupboards doors for luck, all in the hope they will find what they are looking for lurking behind the tins of fruit and soup, healthy cereals and the wholemeal bread.
They slouch off into the inky darkness of their incomprehensibly-smelling interiors of their room, only to come out an hour later and repeat the whole process over again. Complaining bitterly loudly “Why don’t you get the food I like?” and “Can you go and get some food, mum?” To which you reply “Have you got any money?” This is received with another unearthly, eerie grunt, the slamming of the fridge door, followed by their bedroom door.
Heavy, one-beat pounding music permeates the house, informing us the singer is going to slit our throats, that Satanism is alive and well, or that we will all be murdered in our beds. All of which leaves us hearing impaired, which is good in a way, because then you don’t hear their music, their blatherings and whingeing.
You are blessed with visitations from their friends. Friends they have grown up with since they were little. Friends who’ve you’ve only been too pleased your child has tem as friends; they were all so cute and funny.
They turn up on your doorstep looking like a cat on “P” has got amongst their hair and clothes. It’s either the mini, mini skirt with boots up to the knee and spaghetti-strapped T-shirts in the middle of winter, or some boy in a long, black dirty coat, black jeans with suspect stains, heavy chained boots and black heavy metal T-shirts. They stand there, on your doorstep, looking gormless, asking if your daughter/son is in. They inform you that they are going to a club in town, where they will swill beer (if they are allowed in), dance and show off their skimpy outfits and pull (if they are successful), in a frantic haze of sweaty, screaming bodies.
They are all arms and legs and seem to take up so much room in your house that the furniture looks Lilliputian; they eat enormous quantities of food and talk loudly. You can’t hear the t.v. programme you‘ve been waiting all week to see and you ‘shush’ them, only to have your daughter/son turn to you and tell you not to be rude, because they are your guests! They have taken over your home.
You are frightened to go out in case you come back to a house that looks like its been Blitzed. They sit outside and destroy your chairs just by sitting in them and their voices get louder and louder by the second, which is fuelled by their intake of beer. Their loud, raucous laughter brings neighbours flocking like a murder of crows to check there isn’t some wild, orgiastic party going on.
But, in your heart, you enjoy all that because they have ginormous amounts of energy and a sense of the ridiculous. The ‘do’ things you never dreamed of when you were that age, or did, but won’t admit to. You worry about them, hoping they never would do the stupid things you did, but you know they will. You support them and stand up for them when the going gets tough. You wish them well and that they will be happy and successful in their lives.
You drive them, at the dead of night, into town to meet up with their friends. You go and pick them up at midnight from their shitty, back-breaking job at the fast-food restaurant. Or pick them up outside their place of work, after a hard day’s grind selling cheap shoes to customers who bitch and moan with smelly, calloused feet. They moan about how YOUR daughter has treated them badly. You stand up to the abusive, threatening boss who has caste them into the streets, sobbing their heart out.
And then, one day, they are gone from your life. All that caring and nurturing. All that hard work and effort, all the love and kindness you have put into making their lives happy, carefree and safe. Being there 24/7, nursing them back to health, and that time they went through the school window and you spent the whole of the afternoon at A & E, hoping against hope, they wouldn’t need surgery, that the doctor could sew that torn, mangled flesh back together so it wouldn’t leave a scar. All the worry when they didn’t return home at the time they said they would.
They have left home to start their big adventure. The house is silent. Great, you think, time for me. I can do whatever I want. You sit down and the silence envelops you. The quietness thumps in your ears like a beating heart. You feel as though you’ve been torn apart and you put your head in your hands and shuddering sobs rack your body. You had been so good, smiling and laughing with your child as they pack the car that would take them onto their next step in the ladder of life. All their worldly goods crammed in the back of the car. They are on their way to a new type of life. You stand and wave as they leave, a single, solitary figure. They disappear in the smoke from the exhaust as though they never existed at all. You are in shock. The day has finally arrived and you had absolutely no idea it was going to hurt as much as it does. You weren’t prepared for such pain.
You spend the rest of the day stumbling from room to room. The house is unnaturally silent. You stand and stare into the space that was once your daughter’s/son’s room. Everything has been cleared out. Only dust bunnies left, remaining where their chest of drawers, bookcase, desk or bed once stood. One grubby sock left, a dirty plate that had hidden under the bed for years, a half-eaten chocolate bar. A book lay open at a torn page. One small, silent soft toy sits miserably in the middle of the room, forgotten in the haste. Life seems, at that precise moment, utterly flat and without meaning or joy. If only you had known what it was going to be like, you think, you would never have had kids. But that thought disappears in an instant. The pain is immense and there is emptiness deep inside your heart, and it feels like it is going to break.
Days pass, you hear from them via a text message or email or phone, but they only have a few minutes to spare because they are off out with their friends or watching a movie. You have been relegated to that of a duty, because “mum will freak out if I don’t ring her”. You long to have back the conversations you used to have with them, or being able to sit, watching a movie with them, or pulling out your hair over a shopping expedition that went wrong.
You didn’t realise your child had grown into a wonder, beautiful soul before your very eyes. Someone once said to me, through the tough teenage years “One day you will have an intelligent, caring, wonderful person come through that door, and that will be your son/daughter”. I laughed at that. But it is true . The time does come.
You don’t realise what you’ve got until its gone – that saying is true . Life is so short. You only have your children for such a short amount of time. All the times you’ve said to yourself “I can’t wait until they are 6, or 10, or 15 or 20”. That day comes in a blink of an eye and then they are gone and you are on your own. Don’t throw that time away wishing. Enjoy each and every single, solitary second you have with them, immerse yourself in their lives whenever you can. Be kind to them, give them your support, your love, your understanding and acceptance of them. Allow them to be the capable, independent, caring, self-assured people you know they can be.
You will find, later on, you have the best friends you will ever want, and you will know you have done a good job.
THE END