Empty Nest

As my husband and I walked home, we found a bird’s egg under a lime tree. It was small, perfectly formed, and completely unbroken. It rested, intact, on the bright spring grass, an improbable gift.

I’ve never found an unbroken wild egg before. It was cold to the touch, and likely unsalvageable, but like D.H. Lawrence, I carried it home with a flicker of hope — perhaps it could be coaxed into hatching.

In the end, I decided it wasn’t viable. But I kept it anyway, adding it to my ever-rotating shrine to nature on the kitchen windowsill.

The very next day, on another walk, we found the dessicated, skeletal remains of a chick. Its fragile body sat undisturbed on the pavement. It must have tumbled from the nest we could see tucked beneath the eaves of an old house. It was remarkable that it was there at all, on a pavement, where hundreds of people must have walked straight past it.

As you’ll know if you’ve read my Substacks before, I’m given to noticing signs and more than given to pondering their meaning. Two in two days: an egg fallen from a nest before life began, and a chick fallen from a nest after it had ended.

Sometimes signs don't require much deciphering — empty nest syndrome.

My husband and I are married nearly a year, but already our nest is half empty. Our newly-blended family chicks are spreading their wings and flying the nest. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the age of our children. But it does. Maybe we were wearing spectacles tinted by the rosy glow of love and hopes about the shape of a new family, but you can’t fight time.

We are both a little sad. I think I feel it more. Isn’t this supposed to be a woman’s affliction?

The term ‘empty nest’ sounds quaint, even twee, but the reality is more complex. It’s a subtle, hollow ache — or at least the fear of an ache which might arrive any day, if I don’t keep busy. Not a loss in the tragic sense, but a letting go that nonetheless scratches at the edges of your identity. You feed, clothe, nurture, worry, shout, guide, love, and eventually… you let go of a substantial section of motherhood.

There are things you can do, apparently.

Acknowledge your feelings.
Don't stuff them down in a hurry to feel grateful or busy or ‘free’. (I’m absolutely guilty of this.) It’s okay to mourn the end of an era. Sadness is a sign that something mattered.

Stay connected with your children.
If you have teenagers you know this is easier said than done. Just because they have three different messaging platforms, doesn’t mean they reply to you promptly on any of them. One-word replies, or the silence can be deafening.

Find new goals, activities and purpose.
Work, create, travel, write, volunteer, walk. Reinvent. Fill the space with something that isn’t just distraction, but something you want.

Embrace the freedom.
This one is tricky. Yes, you can go on weekends away without worrying about exam revision or sports commitments. You can be spontaneous again. But do you want to yet?

Or you can do the thing you’re not supposed to do.

You can get a puppy.

So… we’re doing that.

To be fair, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. People with two dogs always say you never regret it. They keep each other company. Double the fur, double the fun. But I won’t pretend this wasn’t also prompted by another teenager flying the coop.

Anyway, one puppy isn’t that bad. My mum responded to her empty nest by acquiring a dog, two cats, and — I’m not exaggerating — a small herd of deer. So, our menagerie of one dog, one cat and one puppy is very modest.

That small, perfect egg was never going to hatch. My dear stepdaughter and I made a tiny biology lesson of it. We cracked it open carefully. Inside, the yolk was a deep orange and the white firm and fresh, but there was no nascent life, no chick embryo.

Still, a little bird is coming to live with us. The puppy joining our family next week was, improbably, born on my birthday and his registered name is Black Crow.

Synchronicity, perhaps?

Expect puppy anecdotes and analogies in the weeks to come.