Empty Nest – Think I’ll Git me a Dawg!

I said, “It’s going to be awfully quiet around here this fall, maybe we should get a dog, like that fluffy little one that your hockey buddy Wayne owns.”

He said, “Don’t even think about it (long pause)…besides IF we ever got a dog, we’d get a real dog like a golden lab retriever. But we’re not getting a dog!”

(Long silence.) I thought, “Guess we’ll have to get two dogs, a fluffy one for me and a real one for him.”

Filling the empty nest

Our daughter is moving to Ontario for university this fall, so we’ll be Empty Nesters. Everyone is telling us how quiet it will be without her. Taking this to heart, I’m thinking that maybe we should get a dog to fill our empty nest. Having always been a cat owner and not knowing anything about dogs, I’m thinking that having a dog in the house would be like having a teenager – demanding, messy, needing to be let out of the house, noisy, taking up space, needing to be fed and watered. Sounds like your average teenager, right? And wanting to avoid this thing called Empty Nest Syndrome, I’m casting about.

Years ago, when I was studying Gerontology at Simon Fraser University, I remember reading about Empty Nest Syndrome that’s experienced by a small percentage of women. The Gerontology research in the early 90s indicated that it was a diagnosable condition with symptoms that included a sense of loss and varying degrees of depression. Those women who were diagnosed with Empty Nest Syndrome tended to be completely absorbed with their children to the exclusion of all else. When their kids moved on and they had nothing to fill the void, they experienced an enormous sense of loss, often accompanied by depression and this was labeled Empty Nest Syndrome.

I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, besides kids, but ENS doesn’t sound like something that I want, so I thought that maybe we should get a dog…or two to fill the void when our daughter moves to Toronto.

Surviving the empty nest

Then my sister sent us a book - very timely! It’s called Leaving Home Survival of the Hippest by Andie Parton and Lynn Johnston. Lynn Johnson is the creator of the popular family cartoon strip For Better or For Worse. Having launched three kids of her own, my sister knew that this book would be invaluable – full of advice, wisdom and good humour.  I guarantee that it will bring back memories of what it was like when you or your kids moved out of home, especially the sections called Roommates: Crash Course in Compatibility; When the Money Runs out Before the Month Does: No Green = No Groceries; and Budget is Not a Four-Letter Word.

I’m glad that Parton and Johnston wrote this book. Not only did it make me feel better about our soon to be empty nest, but it saved us a lot of talking to our daughter about the real world of living away from home. In the final chapter, the authors list Reality Checks for the Newly Departed, which include among others, the following:

Reality checks for the newly departed:

1. Your mother is no longer the alarm clock.
2. There is no housecleaning fairy.
3. Childhood is gone.
4. No curfew.
5. You are an adult now, a force to be reckoned with.
6. The mail is always for you.

After reading this, I concluded that there were going to be some real perks to being an Empty Nester and here they are:

Reality checks for an empty nester:

1. My truck will be always be clean.
2. I’ll have a full tank of gas.
3. The phone ringing will be for us.
4. My stash of junk food won’t disappear into thin air.
5. The kitchen counter will be clear of books, knapsacks, bags and clothes.
6. I’ll serve meatloaf for dinner.
7. I can talk to strangers in the grocery line up.
8. I can sleep with both eyes and ears closed for the first time in 18 years.
9. I won’t have to use a GPS to find the washer and dryer in the laundry room.
10. We can run around the house starkers and not have to close the bedroom door!

And about those dogs to fill our empty nest? I talked to a breeder and here was the reality check – puppies keep you awake all night; they chew the furniture; they have to be potty trained; they may have to sleep in your bedroom for awhile; you can’t leave them and go away for a few days; they’re often as much or more work than a new baby. I’m thinking, “I’m NOT gonna git me a dawg – that empty nest looks pretty darn good!”

Copyright Age Matters Communications Group Inc. July 17, 2003

TweetEmailPrint