Just the two of us, again
When my son moves into his own apartment
this weekend, my wife and I will have the house to ourselves for the first time
in more than 26 years.
We raised two kids in the two-story,
red-brick house at the top of a hill in northwest Grapevine. At times, I know
it must have sounded to our neighbors like we were killing each other. Yelling,
wailing, shrieking, pounding, rattling, slamming. And the kids made a lot of
noise, too.
Life in the Gunnels Manse has rarely been
quiet and orderly. Gladiator bouts in the Roman Coliseum were more sedate than
the scenes played inside and out of the Gunnels homestead.
Those wild and crazy days are largely
gone, replaced by relative serenity as our children have grown older, gone away
to college, returned and eventually moved out again.
The final stage
The only sound now emanating from the
Gunnels household is me shouting at the West Highland terrier to stop barking at
the gnat she just heard burp in the front yard.
For Marice and me, the final stage in our
transition to empty nesters approaches. Soon, our son Ethan will gather the
belongings he cares about – and the crap we’ve purchased for his new apartment
– and depart for Dallas.
His new digs are closer to work and
farther from his parents. Perfect.
We’ve been lucky as such things go. When
our kids went away to college, they didn’t travel far – just up the road to the
University of North Texas. We continued to see them regularly – Rachel because
she kept her weekend job with the Grapevine Railroad, and Ethan because he
apparently liked the way I did his laundry.
When Rachel graduated and got a teaching
job, she moved back into her old room to save money for a new car and lots of
new clothes. Eventually, she grew restless and moved into an apartment across
town in Grapevine.
The right fit
By that time, Ethan had moved back home
for his last semester at UNT in a cost-saving move of his own. Since his
graduation last December, he’s been looking for a job with a future and one that
speaks to his soul -- or at least makes him a pile of cash.
Now, he’s found the right fit, and he’s decided
it’s time to strike out on his own. A few weeks ago, he announced he was
looking for an apartment in Dallas. He signed a contract last week, and moving
day is Saturday.
Much as his mother and I would like to
stop the train long enough to catch our breaths, I don’t think we have a vote
in the matter. Ethan is running the show, and that’s the way it should be.
So Marice is helping him get all the
things he needs to set up housekeeping in his efficiency apartment near the M
streets in Dallas. Pots, pans, plates, flatware, a crockpot, and that’s just
the beginning of a dizzying list of must-haves he and she are stacking in the
front room of our home.
Cold, hard world
As for me, I’ve been spending a lot of
time in the last few days thinking about all the things I should have taught my
son about the cold, hard world he’s entering, a world outside the warm embrace
of his parents’ home.
How do you deal with apartment managers
when the toilet clogs up? Where’s the safest place for your car in the
apartment parking lot? How do you avoid being mugged on the way home from
drinks with friends? And on and on. I come up with another 20 or so every night
when I wake up in a sweat at 3:30 in the morning.
Intellectually, I know I’m being a little
ridiculous. My son traveled alone in Europe two years ago, adapting admirably
when an airport cash machine ate his only credit card and traveling solo by train
across Switzerland and Germany. On an earlier study-abroad trip to Italy, he
prowled the bars in Rome with a friend and had adventures he hasn’t shared with
his mother and me. Good lad.
He’s smart and resourceful and utterly
unafraid to venture into the unknown. Ethan has a good heart, but he’s nobody’s
fool. Still, I wonder if he has a hard enough shell to protect him from the
bumps and bruises of life on his own.
I wonder. And I worry.
My job
When I told a friend of mine about my
anxieties, he nodded and patted me on the arm.
“That’s good,” he said. “Go ahead and
worry. As a father, that’s your job.”
Ethan is a bit bewildered by the funereal expressions
he sees on his parents’ faces and our generally downbeat mood.
“I’m moving to Dallas,” he says in
exasperation. “Not Kazakhstan!”
The other night, his mother tried to make
him promise to come home every week for Sunday dinner.
“Absolutely, not,” he said firmly. Then,
seeing the hurt in his mother’s eyes, he added, “OK, maybe a couple of times a
month.”
We’ll see. That’s a lot to ask of a young man
on the threshold of a great adventure, with a myriad of possibilities before
him and life’s siren call waiting around every corner.
Marice already has plans to paint his
bedroom and refurnish it as a guest room. He’s taking most of the furniture, so
she’ll have a mostly clean slate with which to work.
Without him
I’m trying to imagine the Gunnels house
without him. It took me months after his sister left to quit looking for her
white Toyota Rav4 parked at our front curb.
I tear up at the thought of seeing our
dining room table without his freshly laundered clothes stacked in piles. I’ve
bitched at him incessantly about taking them to his room upstairs. Dear God,
how I will miss seeing them there in all their untidy glory.
As I make a glum inventory of the things
I’ll miss when he leaves, one thing stands out. I’m stunned at how utterly
ordinary – and absolutely remarkable – it is.
Several times a week, my solemn and
taciturn son bursts through the front door from the gym and wraps his sweaty,
muscled arm around me.
“I love you, Dad,” he says with simple
eloquence.
Sweet words that dwell in my heart
forever.
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