My wife and I have experienced an empty nest this weekend.
As most of my faithful disciples know, my daughter now lives downstate to attend medical school. My son left on Friday with two friends to drive to Detroit to see a J.I.D concert. As I type these words, he is currently at the venue and is probably out of his mind with excitement. (On a side note, he’s been inflicting J.I.D songs on my wife and me for about a month now as we drive him to and from school. I expect it to get worse when he returns.)
Therefore, my wife and I have been alone in our house for three days now. It has been eerily quiet, and, even though we didn’t express it aloud, I know that we’ve both missed my son screaming at his computer gaming friends all weekend. Or coming downstairs from his bedroom to antagonize our puppy for a little while.
Sharon Olds writes about being abused as a child . . .
After Punishment Was Done with Me
After punishment was done with me,
after I would put my clothes back on, I’d go
back to my room, close the door,
and wander around, ending up
on the floor sometimes, always, near the baseboard,
where the vertical fall of the wall meets
the level rule of the floor—I would put
my face near that angle, and look at the dust
and anything caught in the dust. I would see
the wedding swags of old-lady-hair—
pelmets carved on cenotaph granite—and
cocoons of slough like tiny Kotexes
wound and wound in toilet paper,
I would see the anonymous crowds of grit, as if
looking down into Piazza Navona
from a mile above Il Duce, I would see
a larval casing waisted in gold
thin as the poorest gold wedding band,
and a wasp’s dried thorax and legs wound love-ring
with a pubic hair of my mother’s, I would see
the coral-maroon of the ladybug’s back
marked with its two, night genes,
I would see a fly curled up, dried,
its wings like the rabbit’s ears, or the deer’s.
I would lie quiet and look at them,
it was so peaceful there with them,
I was not at all afraid of them,
and my sadness for them didn’t matter.
I would look at each piece of lint
and half imagine being it,
I would feel that I was looking at
the universe from a great distance.
Sometimes I’d pick up a Dresden fly
and gaze at it closely, sometimes I’d idly play
house with the miniature world, weddings and
funerals with barbed body parts,
awful births, but I did not want
to disarrange that unerring deadness
like a kind of goodness, corner of wetless
grey waste, nothing the human
would go for. Without desire or rage
I would watch that dust celestium as the pain
on my matter died and turned to spirit
and wandered the cloud world of home,
the ashes of the earth.
I don’t believe in corporal punishment. Never have. Hitting children to make them behave doesn’t work. It just scares the shit out of them, or, as in Olds' case, turns them into a poet.
As parents, I have pretty much always been the disciplinarian. When a bad guy was needed, I was the bad guy. It wasn't a role I relished. It's a lot easier simply to give into children's demands than to say "no" and endure temper tantrums. Our kids quickly learned that Mommy was a soft touch. (Mommy is also the one who can talk Dad out of throwing children off cliffs.)
So, what did the disciplinarian and the soft touch do on their first empty nest weekend? We attended a painting class at a local Lutheran church. An entire hall full of wannabe Bob Rosses spent a couple hours painting scenes of the northern lights. I didn't think I was going to enjoy myself that much, but my wife really wanted to do it.
Confession: I really had a good time. I've been a Bob Ross fan since my high school days, so painting happy little trees and making happy little accidents was something I've been training for my whole life.
Now, I'm not going to turn into Grandpa Moses when I retire. The painting I created today may be the only one I ever do. One of a kind--step right up and make me an offer! However, I loved getting out of my comfort zone and trying something new.
When my son returns tomorrow, he's probably going to make fun of my painting. That's okay. Teenagers are supposed to be embarrassed by their parents. It's in the owner's manual. And perhaps I've found a new, non-violent way to punish my son: make him paint with me.
Saint Marty wrote a poem based on a painter, based on a poetry prompt from October 25 in The Daily Poet:
Today is the birthday of Pablo Picasso, born in 1881. To celebrate Picasso's abstract artwork, write a poem about something abstract (love, kindness, hared, soul, afterlife, etc.) using very concrete images, visual elements, and colors. Or ask yourself: If your poem were a Picasso painting, what would it look like?
A Perfect Place to Find Hope
by: Martin Achatz
It's difficult to find hope these days,
you have to look hard, be poet-
attentive all the time for those tiny
miracles that make the heart melt
like cotton candy on your tongue.
I will tell you I found hope
on a walk with my dog today
in the snorts she make as she mined
a pile of gold maple leaves with
her snout. And I should mention
the blue of the sky--it took me back
to a bay on Oahu where I couldn't
tell where ocean ended and heaven
began. Oh, and that autumn smell
of everything returning to soil,
a funk of leaf rot and wood smoke
and sweet exhaust from a neighbor's
dryer vent. I was there, this thing
precious as clean water. I stood
there, let myself become a part
of it, because hope isn't just a thing
with feathers. It is a fulcrum
that can lever the world toward joy.
