Sunday, August 16, 1998

Sometimes the nest just gets too full

By Dale McFeatters

The parental emotional perils of "empty nest syndrome" are well-documented, the sadness and family realignment that take place when one or more kids leave home.

That happened to us two years ago when our oldest son went off to college. With jobs, sports and ROTC, he was home only for scattered visits of a few days at a time -- until this summer when a fortuitous break in the calendar allowed him a relatively extended stay of three weeks.

Nobody warned Ann and me about the perils of "full nest syndrome."

Dale's arrival home was preceded promisingly enough by his 16-year-old brother Matt saying, "When's Dale getting home? I can't wait to show him my (lacrosse stick, 400 hours of professional wrestling videotapes, new biceps, etc.)" and his 14-year-old sister, Kirsten, scrambling to restore all the stuff she had looted from his bedroom.

When the great moment came, I recalled something about child-rearing I had been told long ago: They sleep longer and longer through the night until they come home from college when they don't get up at all.

Ah, but the quality time in those brief waking hours.

For a start, we had what can only be described as a viewing. Kirsten's friends all had to see -- and be seen -- by her exotic older brother. Willowy young adolescent females in cutoffs and midriff T-shirts would visit the house and contrive to pass back and forth before the young college man, zonked out on the couch watching wrestling.

(Pro wrestling, my son assured me, is soap opera for young males. There is some truth to this. Like soap operas, wrestling is pointless and the principals talk too much, but wrestling is much louder.)

Time had softened my memory of our two sons together. That, too, had started promisingly with my older son having learned at Ft. Knox to administer a haircut short enough to satisfy my younger son, who can't seem to attain the proper level of stubble at commercial establishments.

I had, however, forgotten the preferred mode of opening a sibling conversation:

"You know why nobody likes you, don't you?"

"You can't accept the fact that I'm bigger, stronger, smarter and better looking than you, can you?"

This Socratic dialogue escalated until one evening when they were driving back from weight-lifting at number two son's school. Whatever the argument was about -- each gave the same explanation: the other was just being stupid -- the younger one got out of the car and announced he would run the rest of the way home, all 12 miles of it.

Matt was doing pretty well, until he got lost. The phone rang at home; it was Matt -- collect -- saying please come get him. Unfortunately, where he was didn't have any street signs, the number had been ripped off the pay phone and there were no businesses or houses around, only warehouses. One of the warehouses had a name, and that name was in the Yellow Pages, listed at an obscure address.

I was almost lost myself until the only light in the neighborhood turned out to be the loading dock of a Rastafarian T-shirt factory, where the foreman was able to give me directions to where a forlorn figure waited under a streetlight.

So whose fault was it? Mine, of course. Each complained I had reared the other to be an idiot. The question of blame being resolved, they settled in to watch an edifying program involving Goldberg vs. Hollywood Hulk Hogan.

While I was still steaming, Dale promised his brother he would get home some weekend this fall to see Matt play football and that, yes, Kirsten and her friends could ride in his car to the game.

Maybe their mother and I could borrow his college room that weekend. Let the kids cope with empty nest syndrome.

Scripps Howard News Service