When the Children Leave Home – and Four Tiny Paws Move In

There is a period in parents’ lives that we talk about surprisingly little. For years, even decades, someone needs us. We get up in the morning, organise, worry, cook, do the laundry, ask questions, wait, drive them around and offer advice, even when it has not been requested. Meanwhile, almost without noticing, caring for others becomes one of the central organising principles of our lives.

Author: Szilvia Filó

Then our children grow up, and suddenly there is no longer any need to ask, “What time will you be home?” There is no homework to check and no one for whom we leave the light on at night. We no longer need to pack snacks or lie awake listening for the sound of the door opening. Our phone no longer rings constantly because they have forgotten something at home, need to be picked up or have to be driven somewhere.

This is precisely what we wanted. We raised them so that one day they would become independent.

What we were not quite prepared for was that, when their own lives began, we would also have to relearn how to live ours.

The Strange Silence

From the outside, the phrase “the children have left home” sounds perfectly straightforward. There is even something rather proud about it. They have grown up, they are finding their way and beginning to live their own lives.

From the inside, however, it is far from simple.

It is not necessarily tragic, nor does it need to be. Perhaps it is simply strange and, in its own way, a little sad. A home that was in constant motion for many years suddenly feels too large and too quiet.

At times like this, we do not only miss our children. We also miss the people we were when they were with us.

Mum. Dad. The Parent. The person who is needed. The one who is always taking care of someone.

It was then that a tiny Pomeranian puppy came into our lives: a little ball of fluff who, of course, had no idea what a significant change she brought with her. A dog can never take the place of our children, but she can fill a space in our hearts that we may not even have realised had been left empty.

I Used to Smile at This

After my sibling and I left home, my mother also got a puppy.

I remember watching my parents with an amused smile and seeing how seriously they took it all. How much attention they gave the puppy, how protective they were and how they talked to it. They watched to see whether it had eaten, slept and was feeling well. They cared for it, gave it pet names and worried about it and they still do so to this day.

Back then, I always smiled a little at this. Not unkindly; I was simply young and did not yet understand. Perhaps I thought, “After all, it’s only a puppy.”

Now that image sometimes comes back to me, and I see it very differently, because my husband and I are doing exactly the same thing.

“Did She Eat Properly?”

It is astonishing how quickly a new set of questions becomes part of everyday life: Has she eaten? Has she been outside? Isn’t she cold? Why is she so quiet? Do you think something might be wrong? Look at how she is sleeping! Have you ever seen such a perfect little dog? And, of course, the timeless classic: Which one of us do you think she loves more?

The two of us, fully grown adults, are capable of analysing every tiny movement of a little dog with complete seriousness. If she eats well, we are delighted. If she does not eat, we worry. If she gives us a strange look, we immediately begin wondering what might be wrong. When she is sleeping peacefully, sometimes we simply sit and watch her. Just as we once watched our children.

And that was when I began to understand something about my parents, too.

It is not that we confuse the dog with a child, nor that an animal could ever take the place of a grown-up son or daughter. Rather, some of the immense love and care that formed part of our everyday lives for so many years still remains within us.

The children grow up, but the need to care for someone does not simply switch off overnight.

Not a Substitute for a Child, Yet She Still Fills a Space

It is easy to say that a middle-aged or older person who fusses over a dog treats it as though it were their child. Perhaps I once thought something similar. Now, however, I understand that it is far more nuanced than that.

A puppy can fill part of the emptiness left behind when the daily acts of caring for someone are no longer needed. Once again, there is someone waiting for us, someone who is delighted when we come home. Someone who makes us go outside even when we do not feel like it. Someone who demands a game when we are taking life far too seriously. Someone who does not know that we had a bad day yesterday and does not care how old we are, what mistakes we have made or what we should have done differently.

This Is Not Only About Mothers

I believe it is particularly important to talk about this. We often associate the feeling of an “empty nest” with mothers, even though fathers’ lives also change when their children leave home. They may simply show it differently.

I see in my own husband every day how a tiny dog can unexpectedly reveal new sides of a man: his tenderness, gentleness, concern and playfulness, and the kind of love that sometimes needs no words.

There is something remarkable about watching the man with whom I raised our children now explain, with complete seriousness, to a dog small enough to fit in the palm of his hand what she may and may not do. I watch them and smile, and then I realise that he probably sees me in exactly the same way.

A Dog Also Brings Something New to a Marriage

When the children leave home, it is not only two parents who remain behind. Two people are left together once again.

A man and a woman for whom keeping the family running was one of their most important shared responsibilities for many years must now rediscover how to live as a couple.

Strangely enough, a puppy can help with this as well. She gives us shared topics and shared responsibilities and, of course, shared laughter and shared worries. She brings new stories about what she has learnt, what she has done and how she slept. Then, suddenly, we find ourselves showing people photographs of someone again, except this time, she is considerably furrier.

Our Way of Thinking Changes Too

Perhaps one of the most difficult lessons in the second half of life is accepting that we are no longer needed in the same way as before. Our children’s task is to become increasingly independent of us, while ours is to accept this and allow them to go.

An animal can be an unusual companion in this process because, although she does not give us our old life back, that is not what she is supposed to do. She simply helps us build a new one.

Perhaps she also teaches us that love does not diminish when the recipient of that love changes. There can always be a place for care in our lives. She may also teach us that the end of an important stage of life does not make us unnecessary. We simply become important in a different way.

Now I Understand My Parents

Perhaps, in the end, this is where the whole story leads for me: I now understand my parents, whom I watched as a young adult while they fussed over their puppy. I understand why they spoke to it in that way and why they worried about it. I understand why the dog still means so much to them today.

Back then, I was looking at it from the outside. Now I am experiencing it from within.

Perhaps one day our own children will smile at us when they see how seriously we can discuss why the dog has not eaten her breakfast. Let them smile. I did exactly the same, and one day they may come to understand it in precisely the same way.

A puppy cannot bring back the years when our children were small, but that is not her purpose. She gives us something else: a new rhythm to our days, responsibilities, laughter, touch, companionship and unconditional affection. And, of course, she gives all the love that still lives within us somewhere to go.

Our children have left home, and we are slowly learning that an empty nest does not necessarily have to be empty.

In our home, for example, four tiny paws are now running around inside it.

Her name is Molly.

Cover photo credit: Szilvia Filó

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