October 2004 The Megaphone Page 7
by Sharon (Benedict) Hurst
Part 1
When your children are 4 years apart, and there are 3 of them, it seems that you have a house full of teens for 20 years. When the eldest graduates high school and goes to college, the second one is beginning high school. When you live in an area that is blessed with colleges this oldest child has a choice to go away or to live at home. I found that after trying the experience of being on her own, the eldest child preferred to move back into her old room and forgo the worries of being "alone."
We have now completed the first 4 years of "teens." Since the eldest is still a teen and the second is a beginning teen, we think we have enough experience to know all about teens. Wrong! We did not compute the individuality of this second teen. He was not a problem child, just different. His interests and his friends were quite different from that of our daughters.
But we learned. We had one call to school when he was in the 8th grade at the middle school. In those days, boys wore their hair longer. It was easy to accept this as we made a bargain. To keep his hair the way he wanted to wear it, he had to keep it clean daily, take out the trash daily and work in the yard weekly. This was in lieu of allowance. He did get an allowance for his school and to cover his activities, but nothing more for helping around the house except the privilege to keep his hair as he wanted.
Since
we had never had problems in school before with our daughter, we were very
surprised when we were told that although he was not in trouble he had created a
situation at school. Oh dear me, what did he do? Well, he put his jacket on
backwards, wore his glasses on the back of his head (over his beautiful
We
now had another child becoming a teen and beginning high school. Our eldest was
still living at home, but at this time was working and living her own life. No
problem we thought, we have now been through both, a daughter and a son, and all
came through very well. We knew that our youngest son had a very different
personality from the other 2 but he was not a problem child so it would be very
easy to get through these high school years. This child was comfortable in
himself. He could spend hours at the creek catching crawfish or at the lake on
the other side of the golf course fishing. But he was a football star and had a
large group of friends. Our house was the one that always got TP’d (I know you
know what that means) and there were always at least 5 or 6, and sometimes more,
kids at the house playing pool, listening to music or just hanging out when I
came home from my work. These 4 years went past quickly. Then our youngest child
decided to go away to
Our daughter was planning to marry so we were busy with that and we would drive down near Houston to Sam Houston College cross over to Austin and back up to the mid-cities about once a month and that made a good trip for us. We were enjoying the freedom and quiet that came with an empty nest. No problems? As the year slowly passed with no one at the pool table or eating ice cream out of the carton when I came home from work, I realized what being Empty Nesters really meant. Missing all of the kids, noise and commotion associated with teens. Even though the visits at breaks and holidays were much fun, it wasn’t the same as when they were living at home.
Being alone wasn’t at all bad, and we were getting used to being just us again, when POW! -- our nest began filling with children again.
To be finished next month
Sharon (Benedict) Hurst '53
Elwood, Indiana
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