I’m nearly an empty nester. That conjures up conflicting images in popular culture: is it knitwear and cruises, or divorce and microdosing? Either way, there’s a notion of freedom – to take up ceramics, become a sourdough bore, do an Open University degree or, as a woman from my choir apparently did, just stand in the garden and scream.
About the screaming: I’m not actually feeling the need, for now. I have always enjoyed my sons’ progress towards autonomy. It’s not wholly selfish (though I can’t wait to live off toast and takeaways). My memories of later childhood are of impotent boredom; of waiting for real life to start.
My nest doesn’t feel empty now anyway. You just need to count the number of oversized plastic beakers emblazoned with “PhD Nutrition” (where did these cups get their PhDs, hmm) around the house. They sit, clogged with an inch of sludgy pea protein in the sink or under the sofa, where the ants are relishing the opportunity to improve their muscle tone. I could write a hymn of loathing to protein culture, the rancid tang of fake vanilla and the cult of “bulk”, the macho fonts and metal shaker balls that entangle themselves in the drainer rack and bounce out of the cupboards, but will save it for another time. The TV is pumping out weighty dramas about drug dealing, large abandoned trainers ambush the arthritic dog, my crisp stash has been pillaged and their father is muttering with familiar futility about lights left on.
Even so, by the time you read this, the younger should have his A-level results (I say “should” because this week I saw a teacher on Twitter asked, bemused, if anyone else had just been contacted by an exam board wondering if they had time to mark A-level papers. I am sure Everything Is Fine!). He will leave – the elder is already gone and only passing through – and our nest will be officially empty.
I want to take issue, though, with this nest metaphor. I suppose people started thinking about parenting using birds because we saw the feathered version played out year after year, the big-small drama of it. But as someone who has spent this spring and summer obsessively observing my local birds in a way that is absolutely not a compensatory coping strategy – no, why would you say that – I have notes.
First, there is much more death in the bird world. My younger son goes out late, usually on his bike, sometimes all night, occasionally without warning. I lie awake catastrophising, but he’s always come back, so far. The garden birds were less lucky: the percentage of babies who successfully fledge is never high. In March, I disturbed his revision to show him a blackbird ferrying sticks and fluff into the hedge outside his window. In April, I saw her bring beakfuls of worms, then I saw her hover in fear as the neighbours’ cat sat for hours, radiating casual menace, on the fence above the nest (I chased it away, but it returned), then I didn’t see her. I took the dead babies out of the nest, half-feathered, bug-eyed and scrawny, and cried for days. One sparrow fledgling flew into the window and broke its neck; a starling fledgling succumbed to a mangled leg.
It’s a much slower process raising our young, too. Sure, we live far longer, but the weeks I watched the great tits service their nestbox of screaming babies felt like a frantic fight for survival for both adults and young. Maybe I’m just far enough from life with newborns not to remember that feeling, but raising humans is a marathon: meals and laundry and learning; failing and getting it wrong; just occasionally getting it right.
Then when bird babies leave it’s definitive. Through June, my son cycled off in the mornings with his clear plastic bag of pens and I distracted myself topping up feeders and water bowls. I listened to the now-familiar patchwork of calls – alarm and reassurance and just checking in – as my “How was it?” WhatsApps went unread. Then exams ended and he disappeared into a long midsummer stretch of parties and farewells. So did the birds. The front garden blackbirds, who eventually raised a brood successfully, vanished overnight. The great tit teenagers argued with each other in the hedge for a few weeks, but they’ve dispersed now, too. Even the gormless pigeon youths who spent weeks contentedly paddling in the water bowl are gone. But my son comes back, exhausted and hungover (and my other son came home to strip the cupboards with locust-like efficiency). Human fledglings don’t really leave home any more, not in this economy. The birds mean it.
Finally, unless you’re Alec Baldwin or Bernie Ecclestone, that’s it: there won’t be another brood. So thank God for the birds, which seem to be my empty nest hobby, not ayahuasca or swinging. There are long-tailed tit fledglings at the bottom of the garden and another pigeon nesting in the apple tree; I can see it when I stand underneath, wondering what comes next. That’s partly why I’m not screaming: I wouldn’t want to disturb it.
Follow Emma on Twitter @BelgianWaffling
