The Empty Nest

            I drove Clare to and from grade school five days a week, junior kindergarten through eighth grade.  Then she graduated, and the trips stopped.  It wasn’t long before I found a new job, as doorkeeper during four years of high school.  I was there when she walked out the door in the morning for the three-block walk to school and there in the afternoon when she returned.  Then came another graduation.  Three months later, our daughter went away to college.

And the house was empty, no one to wake up, cook for, yell at or counsel.  Michele and I had all the time in the world to consider what we had wrought as parents.  Let me say here that one of my greatest failures as a father was not teaching my daughter how to close a dresser drawer; she is congenitally unable to do so, even after walking into one.  There’s also time to remember bedtime stories and a sudden hug to Grandpa so tight and unexpected he nearly toppled to the floor.

          Then Clare came home in May, and left in August, and came home, left and came home.  Saturday morning, she left for her senior year of college.  The dog hates it, and so do I.