The Nest is Really Empty

Grace wandered around her apartment. Somehow, this was not how it was supposed to be. The phrase, "the silence was deafening," had never had any meaning to her before this moment.

Somehow her noisy, chaotic life of a house of five bedrooms and four children was suddenly a two-bedroom apartment with two cats. Total silence other than the noise of television with whatever was on or an occasional phone call. Anything to break the monotamy; however, it never really was successful. Suddenly, Grace had time to make files of all the recipes from the Food Network she thought would be wonderful to try, but there was no one to "try" them on or even complain about having to try something different to eat.

Grace had known this was coming, and it still had not been a reality until now. She smiled as she remembered her efforts to prepare for this day. There was the pottery class. Although her youngest brother Todd and middle son Caleb were very artistic, the gene pool had skipped her in those attributes. Grace's best artistic effort happened the first night of class with her initial attempt on the potter's wheel. The penis-looking creation that resulted would have made any man proud. Most certainly it served as a source of amusement to the rest of the students, becoming somewhat of an urban legend. They were all women, Grace's age or slightly older, taking pottery for the same reason: the post-kid period of life.

Grace poured herself a glass of chardonnay and went to settle in on the couch. She lit several of the candles, which the kids had considered so frivolous. Remembering she had not had anything since a banana at breakfast she decided it was a good idea to eat. Grace went back to the kitchen, slicing some cheese, placing it on the plate with some crackers. She glanced over to the counter, seeing the bottle of chardonnay, Grace thought, "What the hell?" and took it to the couch with her.

Definitely not the chaotic dinnertimes of her last 28 years, but she had to accept (not like) that this was her new reality. Grace tucked the throw in around her legs, flipped to the channel guide and tried to pretend the cats really understood what she was saying to them about her day, or even cared.

Bubble baths had always proved very therapeutic. Blowing out the candles, she changed her venue and slipped into the bubbly water. Grace mused over her grocery shopping the day before. She had spent longer than she ever had shopping for her family. What did she really like to eat, outside of the context of her children? As the water became tepid, it occurred to Grace that there had been no knocking on the door or major crisis' to solve during her escape from reality. Perhaps there was a silver lining to this whole "empty nest" life.....