My House is Empty

By Rachel Iverson

My house is empty this morning. Totally empty. Empty in the way it used to be on Saturday mornings before my son was born. My dog, who used to fill up so much space in the house, sleeps in the sun. She seems lifeless compared to the kind of reckless energy my three-year-old boy generates.

I'm not sure how to feel about the quiet. I love it, and I feel guilty for loving it. I know it's temporary. The minutes are ticking and the silence won't last more than another hour. He'll be home from preschool, and I'll be snatching up dropped juice cups, marveling at soccer balls kicked high in the air, and whispering assurances that borrowed toys will be returned.

I'll be a mom again. I want to cry when I think of how much I love mothering -- and how much I want my freedom from it. I hate myself for not being more content, for loving the "child-free silence" of my home with a passion that I imagine would horrify the moms I saw modeled in the Jif and Kool-Aid commercials of my youth.

I close my eyes and project myself into the future. I can see my fifty-five-year-old self. Now I have more time alone than I know what to do with, and I regret my impatience.

I see myself sitting at a desk. It's cluttered and messy, just like all my desks have been since I was a girl. I'm typing and sorting through scraps of papers when I stop to flip open my thesaurus, and I glance at a picture of my kids. My three-year-old is a man. His platinum-blond baby hair has mutated to a head of sandy brown wavy locks, but his smile is the same. The daughter that still kicks inside my belly stands next to him, smiling with a closed mouth. She's growing into a woman.

A squirrel rustles in the leaves on the tree outside my window, and I try to imitate the way my son couldn't say "squirrel" and it came out sounding something like "afierral."

And then I remember skinny bare legs that needed kissing after a fall on cement, balloons that floated into the sunshine before I could anchor them to a wrist, and ketchup-and-dirt-streaked faces smiling at me.

But a lot of the time, I was rushed. Rushed and impatient. I yelled when he pulled his shoes and threw them in a mud puddle. I sighed when I was asked to sing "Wheels on the Bus" for the seventh time. I turned the radio volume up when I couldn't stand to hear another plea for juice coming from the backseat.

I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to write. I wanted to think about profound and challenging philosophical and political issues. I wanted to prove something. I wanted to prove I was more than my peanut butter stained sweatpants and tennis shoes full of park sand. I wanted to prove I was smarter than conversations about potty training, and Halloween costumes.

But now my writings are on a shelf behind me. The stacks of words and paper are a testament to my perseverance, my creativity, and my brilliance. Sure, I'm a little wrinkly around the edges, but I've done the work I longed to do. And I'm still writing. But it doesn't have the whisper of new love on it anymore. It doesn't have the scent of my son's musky breath when I'd lean into his crib late at night. It doesn't have the satisfied sleepy smile of a milk-drunk newborn.

I knew their childhood wouldn't last, but at the time it seemed like it would last forever. I thought I'd be eternally enduring screaming fits because I cut a sandwich into pieces that were deemed too small, or put the orange juice in a blue cup instead of a green cup. I thought wrapping presents for birthday parties, and dropping off and picking up from school would never end. But it has.

Now, I can read the Sunday New York Times in bed without listening to the sing-song voice of Barney in the background. When I have to pee, I can be sure nobody will follow me into the bathroom, and ask me what I'm doing. I can go to the movies anytime I feel like it. Morning matinee, midnight showing. Doesn't matter. Because nobody needs me home to make dinner. Nobody needs a tissue for a runny nose. Nobody needs a haircut, or a new pair of tennis shoes.

Now, it's just me and my books, and my words. All of the words I've collected over the years. The words I've stored away from the time I was young, and I finally have all the time I need to unravel them.

My hands rest on the keyboard a little longer. I wait for a sound, some noise to disturb my work. I listen for a dish breaking, or a little voice yelling, "Mommy, can you help me?"

But it doesn't come. And I begin to type.