The Loud Echo of the Empty Nest

While making dinner, I reach for the salad bowl, the one we’ve been using for 22 years. It sits on the kitchen table where it always does — sometimes empty, sometimes filled with fruit or onions, garlic and other assorted vegetables.

The salad bowl is made of a dark wood, nothing fancy, but a part of our lives nearly every night at dinner, resting at the center of activity until reached for to finish the meal.

I turn to my wife, Cathlin.

“I don’t think this thing works anymore. It’s too big,” I say.

Cathlin nods and hands me a much smaller bowl, one fit for two people.

Dinner is a quiet affair, our first after dropping our daughter off at college. There is both too much to say and nothing at all to say. Even the dog seems at a loss for words, looking at us from his spot on the couch, then turning to gaze out the window.

Four years ago we dropped our son off at college, and the return home felt odd and wrong, as if we had forgotten something but couldn’t put our finger on it. But the house was still loud, our daughter and her friends saw to that, and there was always so much to do as parents of a high schooler. There is a different finality, however, to the empty nest, a term I have quickly come to dislike, as the nest is not empty. Cathlin and I are still here, along with the dog. And yet the house does feel empty, but it also feels crowded — with memories, with worries, with too much quiet and too much free time.

I wander from room to room, feeling sad but also guilty about my sadness. After all, this is an achievement, launching a child to the next step of her life. Then I begin to see a glimpse of the larger issue. I have not only said goodbye to our daughter, I am saying goodbye to the dad I once was — a fellow I had grown to like quite a lot.

He was not perfect by any measure but he was the best version of myself I have ever known. Being a parent made me want to be better, not simply to do better as if it were a stretch of skill sets to acquire. No, I wanted to be a better person, and when I failed, I simply tried again because there was no other choice. And eventually I realized it was okay, this one step forward, two steps back existence, starting when our son was born, arriving into this world red faced and screaming, fingers outstretched like jazz hands. His sister’s hello was the opposite, a serene look around, a deep breath, and then back to sleep.

Their goodbyes were flipped, our son running off to the next chapter with barely a backward glance, our daughter holding on to me as tightly as I held on to her.

So what comes next I wonder while wandering about the house, the dog following so closely that his wet nose keeps grazing my calf. The next morning I tell Cathlin I’m thinking of embracing a midlife crisis. She glances nervously at the liquor cabinet and I say, no, not some catastrophic version of myself.

“I want to become 10 years old again,” I announce with a firmness that suggests this is actually possible. “I was content then, hardly needed a thing, and loved waking up each day.”

“I often think I was the smartest I ever was at 10 years old,” Cathlin responds, affirming this new potential portal we might try out together.

Then I notice our daughter’s car keys and decide to add on a few more years so that I can at least drive. I head outside, walking past my car to my daughter’s ride, an old junker we rescued from a near death in Aquinnah, abandoned by a seasonal owner but given new life by my daughter. I turn the key and am reminded of my own teenage car, a Pontiac Tempest with a V8 engine, and already I feel better, the dread of being a parent from afar shifting to one of excitement, speed and youth. The dog climbs in my lap and leans half his body out the window, his paws resting atop the side-view mirror. We pick up speed and his ears fly back in the wind and his nose quivers with a smorgasbord of smells the world is delivering to him.

Yes, I think, while putting in one of my daughter’s CDs (Led Zeppelin) and pressing down on the accelerator, we are on to something, no more sad-sack dad to see here. But soon the dog announces he needs to pee and begin his morning walk. We park and I gather the leash and poop bags, my phone and reading glasses, feel a twinge in my knee and my lower back, and suddenly I feel ancient and sad again.

I try to stand up without grimacing and notice one of my daughter’s friends waving at me. He is working his summer job, wearing the flourescent vest of a Menemsha parking attendent.

“I saw her car and I thought it might be her,” he says.

“No, we dropped her off at college,” I say. “I’m just driving her car because, well, because of a lot of things.”

“Yours broke down?” he asks.

I pause and almost confess to this teenager how driving my daughter’s car and listening to her music makes me miss her both less and more, which somehow feels right, but decide against it and just nod.

“Yeah, mine’s a total mess,” I say. “I think I’ll have to drive her car for a long time.”

When I get back home, I see there are several texts from my daughter.

“Dad,” she writes. “I hear you are driving my car. What gives?”

I am about to call her to try and explain everything I am thinking and feeling. But instead, I reach for a pad and pencil and write her this essay.

This article appears in September 4, 2026.