Grateful for any WhatsApp chat, I end up as a bespoke Google, offering passwords, delivery updates and credit card details
I’m getting used to life without my sons, now both at university. I don’t know if replacing them with extensive building works helped, but it certainly provides distraction (it would be uncharitable to say “and a comparable level of mess”, so I won’t). I miss them, but if they’re fine, I’m fine. Either this is denial, or I have the maternal instinct of the leopard tree iguana (which abandons its offspring after 48 hours with a pile of excrement for company), or I’m really well-adjusted. I’m pretty sure it’s option one: it still feels temporary. My husband is sadder, I think because he has understood this is the start of their one-way path away from us.
I do worry about keeping in touch, though. It’s hard to gauge what is appropriate: is it a massive downer to get a message asking how their day went, or does silence feel like I’m happily putting their bedrooms on Airbnb? I could request a weekly call, but I’m resistant to being that predictable, even though as a parent, it is quite literally my job.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
