This article is 94% true.
Then.
“I don’t think she’s very happy” said my youngest daughter. We stood in the hallway outside her sister’s closed bedroom door. The light spilled around the edges of the blinds and over us both. I stared at her, my mind blank.
My arms, sleeved in pink and grey checkered cotton, ached from holding the full laundry basket as I looked up at her.
Wisps of her pink hair clung to her ghostly face, marked by angrily red acne, burgundy t-shirt flowing languorously down to her knees lending itself woefully to the look of waif. A tiny glow-in-the-dark-star clung desperately to her knee, betraying her childly soul. Mask in her hand to stave off the plague. Sadly emptiness washed whitely from my toes.
I put down the laundry basket and turned the door handle.
“I’m not sure any of you will ever be able to leave home,” I thought.
Now.
Pocket money and naughty steps, I will never use them again.
Netflix passwords and late night pick ups.
Star charts and stickers, I will never use them again.
T-shirts that might be their dad’s and no-idea-whose-socks-these-are.
Hard backed books with soggy sucked corners, I will never use them again.
Asking permission for downloading apps and asking me to buy vodka.
No longer weighed down by the seriousness of responsibility and curves, I am light, dancing. Stars flicker from my lips and my feet make no contact with the ground. I spin my body and my heart spins counterclockwise, my skirts catching up then falling loose.
My skin is sheer, see-through as I dance, veils attached to the ends of my wrists as I cry endlessly for the leaving of those dearest to my kindly heart.
Gone, blissfully yet eternally; that knowing brings the ache to my aged bones. Wistfully I move about the fierce emptiness of the rooms.
Dust, gathering, desperately bringing a presence, darkly reminding me that it will never be moved now unless by my own hands, which move now to straighten the curtains in his room, to straighten his bedcovers, to straighten the chair at his desk.
No more coffee cup stains, no more empty crisp packets, no more piano from the room above my office, no more teenage-man-boy-stink wafting out, no more closed door.
Then to straighten the blinds in her room. No more strawberry candles, no g-strings to tangle up the washing machine, no more half-empty vodka bottles, no more long hair in the shower.
Be careful what you wish for.
For all the empty-nesters out there: One Thousand Women is a container for women who want to come together, create a life of meaning, and leave the world a better place than they found it. And give them something to do when the house is strangely quiet.