Stefan Vladimirov
It’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since our youngest child left for college. Since both kids chose schools distant enough to involve air travel, their visits home have been few and far between. With the distance, the occasions we’ve had both kids back under the roof at the same time can be counted on the hand of a clumsy carpenter: Thanksgiving, a few days in January, Easter … and now. This time, both descended in a post-finals avalanche of overweight baggage and unwashed clothing that crested in mid-May and has yet to recede.
As every parent of adult children knows, the departure of the last child on an apparently successful trajectory towards independence elicits a complicated soup of relief, excitement, and sadness. There’s the relief that your kids appear on a path to becoming functional members of society, excitement about regaining a modicum of agency over your daily routine, and sadness at the dawning realization that these people—the stars around which your worlds have turned—will probably never live in your home again (just when they become adults who are fun to be around). Somehow, you mourn the end of the endless, often exasperating, cycle of mundanities that make a parent’s life simultaneously overwhelming and utterly satisfying: the daily hugs, bedtime stories, pancake breakfasts, box lunches, school commutes, music and sports practices, and the decades of family dinners. On average, our family probably sat down to a home-cooked dinner together six nights a week. For years, few days ended without a table set with spaghetti Bolognese, say, or roast chicken, or lasagna. Chicken and sausage gumbo, minestrone, pond-caught bass, and jambalaya were all in rotation, depending on time of year and the passing fancies of cook and diners. There were thousands of dinners to prepare over the course of twenty-odd years. Until suddenly, there weren’t.
To begin with, of course, it’s wonderful. You come home, look at each other over the top of a wine bottle, someone says, “Cheese and crackers?” And you call it a night. After twenty years of having supper on the table for 7 pm, the freedom to potter in the garden for an hour or two, then come in and have a chicken leg or half a cold sausage feels like the height of luxury. You shop sparingly, eat when you feel like it, and don’t go back to the grocery store until the only things in the fridge are parmesan, mayonnaise, and half a jar of olives.
Then, in a lovely, chaotic explosion, they’re suddenly home! For days we celebrated with childhood’s greatest hits—spag bol, grilled bratwurst, flank steak with chimichurri, and so on. But while they’ve been away, we’ve apparently lost the intuitive ability to anticipate the warp and weft of the teenaged appetite: that sixth sense that enables parents to always have the right kind and quantity of foodstuffs on hand to keep their needs met. After a couple of weeks, we started to drift back into our new habit of not really thinking about dinner, then just making do with what’s available. The kids were quick to notice … and they didn’t like it.
Realizing the standards might’ve slipped a bit, on a recent Saturday my wife and I planned half a dozen meals, then stocked up on everything: staples, snacks, steaks, salmon, pounds of chicken, rice, pasta, and so on. Then we spent all Saturday afternoon prepping and cooking various dishes with the goal of leaving a fridge filled with choice morsels to satisfy the hungry natives during the busy week ahead. Then, on Saturday night the kids announced the imminent arrival of a couple carloads of friends for a pool party (“Don’t worry, they’ll bring a pizza!”). The pizza was gone in about four minutes. When it was, they began circling the newly prepared bonanza like jackals. Seeing the writing on the wall, my wife and I took our wine and some cheese and crackers and retreated to the porch. In two hours, everything was gone. Sigh … Back to the grocery store we go.
My mother, who is a marvelous cook not given to effusive declarations of affection, has always said that the way she expresses love is by feeding the people she cares about. I think I’m wired the same way. As surprisingly hard as it’s been to suddenly resume the parental role of daily provisioner, it’s also a joy—a foundational pillar in my life as a parent that I miss when the kids are away, and will forever look forward to reprising on the increasingly rare occasions when they come home.
