Against the Dark

One’s – mine at least – instinct is to think that the empty nest will be painfully quiet.

No more desperate chicks calling incessantly for food.

Jostling for space and attention.

Ruffling their feathers.

Constant noise?

Despite my hearing feeling more acute than usual, there is no obvious new quiet.

No.

Our house is always quiet.

What?!

…Ok, nearly always quiet!

The neighbours would probably guffaw if they read that – after all, we have an acoustic drum kit in the basement!

And yet this silence, that I am so very used to, is deafening right now.

20 years ago I was 12 weeks pregnant.

The time it worked.

The only time.

It’s a pretty neat sum for calculating the length of time we have dedicated our lives to our beautiful baby boy.

All (almost) six feet of him.

And suddenly now he is not sleeping downstairs.

He didn’t sleep over with a friend after a late night out – ‘back soon’.

He has not gone to college early, or gone off for a band rehearsal.

He is far away.

And it’ll be weeks till we see him again.

It is surprisingly hard.

I say surprising, maybe you aren’t surprised, but somehow I had no idea how this would feel.

I know how I’ve felt on the odd morning when both my husband and son have been out and I’ve been feeling particularly down. 

Returned to bed for hours. 

Wept from the insane loneliness I felt being home alone.

But, at the moment it isn’t that.

Maybe that is yet to come.

This is just grey and empty.

Not debilitating.

Just sad. Hollow.

But there’s other stuff too.

I’m anxious about his bigger picture.

How he’ll find college.

Whether he’ll have enough respect for his teachers – he has very high standards of what he expects from them. His academic and cerebral activities in his field are very high and slightly scary by my standards!

But mainly, where he is concerned I’m just fuck proud of what an awesome human being he is.

I’m constantly amazed at his laid-back attitude to solitude (the upside of being an only child) but also his ability to seek out social life. A more recent skill. But one he seems to be aceing.

His general life skills are pretty hot too – he can budget well, despite any tendencies we have towards the finer things in life, he’s really happy to have the very cheapest version (I’m talking peanut butter and baked beans!), he loves a charity shop, and his obsession with food-YouTube  – one of our family bonding activities – means he is a good and interesting cook.

His interests are eclectic – one day in the summer he decided to spend the day learning the names of the clouds. 

He has taken a book of five plays by Chekov from Matt’s bookshelf. 

He’s very happy getting out on his bike. 

He took us to some of the best shows we saw in Edinburgh this year – Improv and game shows.

He is constantly on the lookout for a copy of The English and Scottish Popular Ballards by Frances James Child (anyone got one kicking around they are happy to part with?!). 

And, as requested, I’ve just managed to pick up a copy of Volume 2 1970’s Reader’s Digest The World’s Best Fairy Tales. 

And that’s before I start talking about him and music.

I’m not sure I meant this blog to be about how utterly amazing my son is.

I’ve really struggled to write a blog for a long time now.

I think I wanted it to be about empty nest syndrome and my experience of it.

Maybe writing about him is my way of reassuring myself he’ll be fine?

Maybe I’m nervous he’ll read it and realise the blubbering mess he has left at home?!

If you’re reading this G, don’t worry, we fumbled our way through the last 20 years with no idea of how to bring up a child, and now we’ll fumble our way through the next chapter. 

Seems we aren’t too bad at fumbling.

Wonder if I could put that on my CV?

Great at fumbling…

He was very adamant from the outset that he wasn’t going to play the violin.

Everyone played the violin – Great Grandpa, Nana, Mum, Auntie Anna, Uncle Tom, Dad, even the hallowed, nay, worshipped Uncle Dan… 

And if they didn’t play the violin at least they played the piano – Great Grandma, Great Nana, Grandma, Great Aunt…

But he was going to play the drum kit.

From the first moment I ever remember him talking about music, it was the drum kit.

Never anything else. 

Just the drum kit.

Is that nature or nurture? Or maybe neither…

We – well, I can’t actually take any credit for this – have always listened to a wide mix of music – indeed, he listened to the BBC Proms entire season while going to sleep year after year, he would get excited when the season was about to start!

But in classic style, eventually, classical music became ‘boring’.

He maintains it’s an educated judgement and I made him sit through too many concerts I was playing in!

I’ve no regrets. While on tour in China, ‘bored’ during a concert, he taught himself to wiggle his ears! That’s a pretty cool party trick… 

However, when he announced, at about 14, that he wanted to be a musician, we couldn’t have been more surprised.

We had given in to the drum kit at age 10, having insisted he played the violin briefly. 

He played a solo on the stage in the concert hall of The Royal College of Music. 

Ok, so it was Lightly Row (Suzuki Book 1), but he enjoyed it at the time.

Do you ever ponder (those in a position to do so) all the things your child might have done?

We chose a good violin teacher, but lessons (and group class) were a six-hour round trip every other Sunday.

It nearly killed us all.

I had undiagnosed Endometriosis.

Life was exhausting.

Practising with him every day was exhausting.

Even chopping the chocolate buttons into quarters to feed him after each time he played through a piece was exhausting.

Shortly after his solo debut, we let him give up.

Maybe we gave up.

It was all too much.

He didn’t want to play the violin anyway.

What does he play now?

Well, beyond the drum kit, he plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, banjo (he plays this and tambourine in an award-winning band), and synths. 

I’m not sure how many of the ‘boxes of electrics’ fall under the term ‘synth’, but believe me there are a lot of them. But some of them are pedals.  

He has a violin and cello (both of which he has recorded music on, but by classical standards, he cannot play!), matchbox violin, didgeridoo…  basically, if it makes a noise he will play it.

And where did we leave him?

Brighton.

By the sea.

Lucky bugger.

What will he study?

Songwriting.

Who knew you could get a degree in songwriting?

Well, now you all do.

Everyday a school day.

And me?

Us?

Luckily for me, my husband is also pretty awesome.

There’s a lot of ‘loss’ for us to reprocess, and I may have shed a tear this morning when reminding myself that the heavenly silence did not include gentle snoring in the basement.

But every parent I have spoken to about my impending empty nest has acknowledged the pain and then said ‘It’s ok, they soon come back!’

So I’m going with that as I fumble headlong into the next chapter.