what could alibhai hear
Answers
Explanation:
Tonight our daughter returns from university after her first year. The house will sing (and shout) again. I'll cook feasts while she watches American sitcoms. There will be mother and daughter flare-ups, ending in the fondest of tears and tightest of hugs. After she went off, my husband and I could work and go out more without guilt and rediscovered each other in ways that aren't possible when your focus is on raising kids. None of that filled the emptiness she had left behind. You never get used to it.
My friend, the novelist and journalist Nicci Gerrard, whose four children are now all away, describes how for home-alone parents "life suddenly feels the wrong shape". I still remember the sorrowful months following the flight of our son. He couldn't wait to go off to Edinburgh University; I couldn't bear to let him go. When he asked if he could move back in with us in his mid-twenties, happiness, like sunlight, illumed our lives once more.