Rat Race

Empty Nest

By Olive L. Sullivan

Being the deeply insightful and self-aware person I am, I have just started to realize that I’m homesick. Sounds a little odd, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I have been thinking I needed to get away, take a vacation, go on a retreat – like the Jimmy Buffet song says, somewhere other than here. But I suddenly realized today as I stifled the umpteenth yawn and counted down the hours until I could crawl back into my own bed, what I need is to go home – the archetypal home we long for when we’ve been too long in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language, but also home to the real, physical house where I live. I miss my house, my dogs, my bed, my old life. I want to finish painting the bathroom, clean the garden up for spring, plant a lilac and some rose bushes, build some bookshelves for the library that will be where my son’s newly vacant room is now. I want to sleep, to knit, to, for goodness sake, watch mindless T.V. of my own choosing.

I feel as if I have been camping out in my own life for the last six months. I get up, dash out the door for work, come home, say hello to the dogs, perhaps change clothes, and I’m gone again. In addition to the job that eats up my days, my evenings are full. For example, last week I had a Monday night class and a major editing deadline, Tuesday I helped my dad with a photo presentation he is working on, had dinner with the folks, and took some of my son’s friends to a movie in exchange for some work they did for me. Wednesday I met another friend for supper and girl-talk and went home to frantically get the house ready for a guest speaker I had invited to stay at my house after the Joplin Writers Guild meeting Thursday night. Friday we got up at the crack of dawn for breakfast at Harry’s Café before she headed back to Kansas City and I headed for my job in Joplin. These are the things I did – they don’t include the four events I turned down, or the trip to the library that my mother made for me, or any number of other things that needed doing and didn’t get done. Friday night I cooked dinner for Spike (because the house was already clean for my Kansas City guest), and Saturday I was up early baking a pie for Easter, running to the store, working on my next editing project, doing laundry and dishes, etc. At one, Spike and I went to a Seder reception, and the day was off and running. We didn’t take a breath again until after dinner about ten o’clock that night.

Although I was in and out of my house all weekend, it seems I was never there for more than a few minutes at a time. To add to the complications, my son was home from Manhattan, Kan., trying to move out. He showed up about two Saturday morning, girlfriend (whom I’d never met) in tow, grabbed my debit card, and called me Sunday to ask how much money I had in my bank account. Yikes. I saw him in little vignettes: at my parents’ house Saturday night, with new glasses that make him look like someone else; breakfast Sunday at Spike’s house; under his desk and reaching for a screwdriver as he took it apart to load into the U-haul; standing in the U-haul itself arguing with Mike over where things would best fit; and waving goodbye from the cab of the truck as Georgia pulled out ahead of him in his car. Gone.

I went home, then, at last, and kicked around the debris left in his room: outgrown books and old video game boxes; a board game missing crucial pieces; a Russian dictionary; some dust bunnies the size of small Rottweilers; a handful of change; a pair of boots; the stuffed monkey I bought him at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kan., the year we moved back to Kansas. The fact that he’s really gone hasn’t quite hit me yet. He did invite me to come see him and take him out to dinner (and I did get the debit card back before he pulled out of town!).

At last I went to bed, snuggled up in my familiar blankets with just the right combination of pillows and dogs and a good book, our world back to a manageable pool of lamplight. I felt like the Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s book The Wind in the Willows, when he stumbles upon his front doorstep after a wonderful summer of adventures on the River and in the Big Wide World. Like Mole, I love the people who have been such a big part of my life for the last six months, and I look back in astonishment at all that’s happened and how much has changed. But at the end of the day, it sure is nice to be home.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on April 20, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.