It’s weird that it feels weird to have a full house again this weekend.
Carlton’s two older brothers have returned home to celebrate his 15th birthday today (the actual day was Oct. 10). Just when I have adapted to the extra space and quiet, there are more people and more noise and no place to sit.
And I love it.
When Barron, our oldest, left for college in 2019, it was a grand adventure we all went on vicariously through him. Everything is a first for the oldest, and with two still at home, his absence was felt and we missed him, but life went on pretty much as it had, particularly with our middle, Harris, stepping into his brother’s shoes in high school.
Somehow, when Harris left for Mercer University in August, our homelife changed more dramatically, even with Carlton starting high school.
We have discovered that an unintended consequence of having three children four years apart is that you do everything for a dozen years. I thought I was never going to graduate from Cub Scouts. They even gave me a giant eagle trophy when I left, though there was no one in that room who knew me when I showed up a dozen years earlier.
Dramatic change no. 1 with Harris’ departure is that Carlton flipped the script in high school, ending our run of band parents at eight years. He’s fully converted us into theater parents as he matriculates at Gwinnett School of the Arts at Central Gwinnett High School in Lawrenceville.
He takes his academic classes online, so we no longer have the high school schedule of having to wake up a child at zero dark thirty to catch a bus. I’m gone for work most days before he rises, and the carpool to Lawrenceville has him arriving on campus at 10:20 a.m., which works much better for Carlton anyway. It’s a big change from having to wake up Barron and then Harris, and seeing them off to school. As annoying as it was to have to worry about them falling back asleep, making sure they were on time was a role I took seriously.
Dramatic change no. 2 occurs at mealtimes. Carlton’s rehearsal schedule for various productions means Carla and I often eat alone. At first we continued to sit in our assigned seats at the opposite ends of our long and narrow kitchen table. When I made the comment that we needed a butler to serve us dinner and help cover the distance of passing the ketchup, Carla repositioned our seats the next night so that we were together on one end of the table.
When Carlton does join us, his faithful canine companion, Sir Winston Waffles Wallace, has become so bold as to take Harris’ seat. He doesn’t talk nearly as much, and we don’t feed him human food. He does seem really interested in our conversation or at least in what we are putting in our mouths.
And that brings us to dramatic change no. 3. In the “Before Times” when we ran our household with more precision, Winston would never have been allowed to sit at the table while we ate. He has his “place” and he knew it. Somehow he’s gotten it in his head that his “place” is now at the table. I may or may not have reinforced this by sharing some Cheerios with him when his hungry stares got too much for me to bear.
That’s not all we’ve gotten more lax about. We have abandoned the “next man up” approach to battlefield promotions. When Barron left, Harris inherited his chores, but when Harris left, Carlton retained his chores and Harris’s chores have been picked up by Carla and me. Even though we teased Carlton when he was anticipating Harris’ departure that he was going to have to do all the chores, we succumbed to his stall tactics and just empty the trash and load the dishwasher ourselves.
We are definitely not at an empty nest yet, but we can see it from here. All the clichés are now staring me in the face, and I’m a little worried. Carla and I have experienced enough awkward silences that we are realizing we have to reconnect as a couple or in four more years when things get really quiet, we’ll be sitting in silence.
Carlton has been lobbying lately for another dog. He says Winston needs some companionship when he’s at school all day. I am not convinced. I also witnessed my parents go through a pet explosion when I left home. It was an unusual and unexpected circumstance, but for a while there, their house was overrun with dogs.
Besides, I don’t want our dinner table to look like that painting of dogs playing poker.
For this weekend, I’m happy to have a full house again, even with the crowding and noise. We’ll celebrate around our table and enjoy having everyone home. It’ll be a good warmup for Thanksgiving.
One thing’s for sure, Winston is not happy about losing his seat at the table.
New South Essays 