Mother Haunting
My mother haunts me on the holidays– particularly Halloween. She makes me buy candy corn, and pumpkin stickers and that autumn runner that makes no sense on my circular table.
She mocks my organic, wholesome lifestyle, saying that before long “my children will be gone.”
I send my husband out for marshmallows and rice krispies to make a treat my boys have never known; and I thank my mother for all the ways she loved me before she was gone.
Judgmental Squirrels
It’s peculiar to sit here at the computer, writing about my empty(ing) nest, while out my window, two squirrels work to build a nest in the shed.
Watching them scurry is exhausting. Their industriousness makes it impossible to focus on my own work.
Oddly enough, they seem equally interested in me–stopping on their way from the shed to the field (and back again)–to perch on the stonewall or the clothesline to study my stillness.
“How does she sit there all day?” they ask themselves.
“Shouldn’t she be out collecting acorns for her family?”
In the face of their judgment, I consider Paris.
No doubt French squirrels mind their own business.
The Empty Nest Diary 