Having raised four children, with the youngest just having graduated from high school and now off to college, my wife and I have been preparing for the “empty nest”. We heard fanciful rumours of this blessed stage for years. We longed for and dreamed about this during the child-rearing years, tirelessly working and traveling this path with a yearning not unlike the pioneers of old heading West on the wagon train to get to the spacious lands of plenty. In the myths and legends, the West would set their true spirits free with plenty of time, space, and resources, to pursue their dreams and fulfill their manifest destinies. Our destiny was at hand.

My wife and I have been certain that, with the coming of such opportunity for leisure time and plentiful resources, we would create, write, travel, and drink bourbons and margaritas, more than the poor peasants with children still at home could ever imagine. Nirvana and enlightenment would be ours at last. Cold fusion you ask? Done. The “Next Great Novel”? Yep. Any minute now.

Our brief experience with what we thought would be an empty nest this weekend was been a bit more……chaotic. We began with plans of grandeur – movies and margaritas on Friday, sleep in on Saturday, and a small two- hour kabob-grilling and cold beer family get-together Sunday afternoon. The weekend would largely be ours, to relax and do as we please. Silly rabbits.

Friday evening brought us our middle-daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law, along with their two kittens. Our two dogs enjoyed their new toys! Saturday, my mom arrived a day early with her puppy, wanting to spend “quality time” with us before Sunday’s grill-fest. Nice, but we’re not done yet folks. In short order, all well before Sunday’s “family time event”, the house was full of folks as my sister arrived unexpectedly from the city and my other two married daughters, and their husbands, also arrived. With more animals than Noah’s Ark, and with people sleeping on couches, in hallways, and doubled- up in the spare room, the wagon was full and the prairie was not as expansive as we had imagined.

With eleven people, three dogs, and two cats, all in our humble three-bedroom abode the idyllic West was trapped in its dime-store novel. However, we wouldn’t have traded that anarchy and commotion for the pioneer’s government promise of “150 acres and a mule” in any time or any century. We were living the good life in every way that matters. And we knew it.

The “kids” laughed, talked, cried, and played to the wee hours as though they were little again and had never left. Our sons-in-law ((and almost son-in-law) joined in the action with gusto, and proved to us yet again that our daughters were in good hands. Our son, the youngest of the clan and the recent graduate, held his own and gave as good as he got, showing his older sisters that he had arrived and can play their reindeer games too. All the while my sister and mom reminisced with my wife and I about our early days and struggles, and the coffee and conversation flowed. Good times.

The kind of good times that you can only read about in the “”Next Great Novel”. Cold fusion can wait, I guess. The coffee’s done.

copyright 2019, all rights reserved.