The year is 2020 and Logan’s bags are packed for college. He gets his syllabus, his books, and his parents drop him off at his new dorm. He’s only living an hour away, so visiting over the weekend is doable if he likes. His dorm is small, but he’s excited to be moving in and exploring the campus. His mom and dad offer to take him to dinner before they leave, and he agrees, but they can tell he wants to be doing other things. He has an entire new space to explore, and he’s a social guy. They ask him if they can get a rain check on dinner, instead ensuring he’d at least visit that weekend.<\/p>\n
They’re getting weepy on the drive home when their phones start going off rapid-fire. Kelly panics for a moment, before discovering that Logan is texting the both of them pictures of campus and things he’s excited about. The caf\u00e9, a selfie with an office manager, the library, an instructional walkthrough of using a home computer, circa 1976, followed by about sixteen laughing emojis. This doesn’t stop them from being weepy, but it does put some of their fears aside. Logan is a smart young man, and they can experience a bittersweet mixture of pride and sadness together as a couple.<\/p>\n
Pulling up to the house an hour later, it’s quiet, and the upstairs lights are off. There is a logical understanding to be had that obviously the house will be quieter. They were somewhat prepared for that. But it’s one thing to know it and another to feel it. The house is quiet, and they can suddenly hear the creaks and echoes they never seemed to before. The screen door closes a little too loudly, and placing their shoes by the door seems to put the sound through the whole house.<\/p>\n
The BookNook is dark, closed for the day with no one home. As the streetlights click on one by one outside, Michael and Kelly sit at the kitchen table, waiting for the kettle to boil for tea.<\/p>\n
“Does college count as an empty nest?” Kelly asks, brow furrowed in thought.<\/p>\n
“I’m…honestly not sure…?” Michael says, prompted by the gentle whistle of the kettle to get up and pour the hot water into mugs.<\/p>\n
“Part-time empty-nesters, maybe?” Kelly laughs. They’re in their forties, barely, and feel young for it, but they had Logan young so that makes sense.<\/p>\n
The sadness of it all is at least helped by the consistent dinging of both of their phones. Logan is fine. Maybe even better than his parents are. This isn’t forever, Logan will come home from college on the weekends, summer, and during holidays. And when he graduates he’ll come back for awhile. But even this pocket-sized quiet gets Kelly and Michael talking.<\/p>\n
The house is lovely, and something they want to keep in the family. There isn’t any question there. But it’s a bit big for just two people, alone. It isn’t a ‘right now’ plan, but they sit and talk for awhile what they might like when their older. They agree on a savings account, for now, so that if they ever find they need to downsize, they can afford to buy something smaller. The house they live in has no mortgage on it, allowing them to put aside money easier than most. They worry that this will be the last generation in the house. It’s possible that Logan won’t want to start a family and continue things. It’ll still go to him, but likely when his parents pass away, rather than downsizing earlier and giving it to him. They get caught up in ‘what ifs’ long into the night.<\/p>\n
Kelly laments briefly that they didn’t have another kid. Michael holds his wife. Kelly isn’t really upset they didn’t have a second. In reality, she’s upset they didn’t have the good sense to have a child that grew slower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The year is 2020 and Logan’s bags are packed for college. He gets his syllabus, his books, and his parents drop him off at his new dorm. He’s only living an hour away, so visiting over the weekend is doable if he likes. His dorm is small, but he’s excited to be moving in and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[639],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thesimsoverthinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55986"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56001,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55986\/revisions\/56001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}