It had been a long term at college, so when our son rang to ask if he could visit home for a while, I said I’d allow it provided he spent some of it with us instead of exclusively in the company of his friends. Since he’d planned his vacation for a week, we agreed that he’d stay home on four evenings; we’d have a dinner for our friends who wanted to meet him one night; go out to a restaurant on another, and leave him an evening free for his buddies.
On the first day he slept — waking, my wife said, to have lunch before going back to bed again, from which I had to shake him awake when I got back from work. “It’s good to be home,” he stretched, “but now I must go out since it is a friend’s birthday tomorrow, and we have decided to wish her at midnight.” He said he couldn’t have dinner with us since his other friends would insist on eating together, besides they had to be picked up from their houses in different parts of the city, so we should go to bed and not wait up for him. My wife put the chicken she had made for him back in the fridge.
The next night he promised he’d be back for dinner, but that we should go ahead and have ours as he could get late. It wasn’t so much that he was out as he was just hanging out with friends and didn’t want to break up the group. The chicken got put away again and all I saw of my son as I left for office the next morning was his sleeping head. That third day, he promised to spend with his mother provided she took him out shopping, and so when I got back, he was in a cheerful mood and we’d barely sat down over a drink when a friend called to say he’d broken up with his girlfriend…could my son go over to lend a shoulder in his hour of crisis? My wife didn’t even bother to take out the chicken casserole.
The next day, even though I had taken the day off from work, he went out biking with my brother, and then said it would seem rude if he did not spend the evening with his uncle, so to escape another evening snapping at each other, my wife and I decided to go to dinner to our neighbours. The next morning, our son said it saddened him that his parents now had their own life in which, clearly, he enjoyed no more space, so if it was all right he would like to quit the evening’s family dinner at a restaurant in favour of an all-boys’ night out at a pub, but we should go ahead and not cancel the programme on his account.
The sixth night was the dinner we’d planned at home for our friends, and it was well after 10 when most of them fetched up. “I’m shocked,” said my son, even though he’d grown up seeing them come at even odder hours, “I thought you oldies would be in bed by 11, so I’d made plans to go out for dessert with some pals,” leaving us to celebrate his homecoming in his absence.
The chicken remained uneaten on the seventh night on account of it being the one free evening, my son said, we’d built into his visit. When we saw him off the next morning, he said, “I hope you realise you’re a little claustrophobic as parents, so the next time I’m home I’d like a little out time with my pals.” “Come, come,” said my wife sympathetically to me, “there’s chicken at home for dinner.”
