Kennedy: Coming to grips with an empty nest and missing those games of catch

Joe Kennedy and his aging bullpen catcher/father Patrick Kennedy mug for the camera after a game of catch.

October 21, 2024

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

When my wife Lorraine and I deposited our youngest child at Brock University last month, we entered the unknown – an unpredictable, inescapable trek into uncharted territory that all parents take sooner or later.

If you think I'm talking about the nerve-fraying freeway out of St. Catharines and into and out of the nail-biting traffic in the GTA corridor, good guess but no. I refer instead to that inevitable period in parents' lives when the last kid leaves home on route to adulthood, leaving Ma and Pa to deal with the unforeseeable aspects of...“Empty Nest Syndrome.” (ENS).

The humour columnist Erma Brombeck once wrote: “When parents talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the vice-president of the United States.”

Parents know this day will come. They have an ENS foreshadowing. In our case it seemed to kick in around the time our son Joe, a latter-day JFK and the last of the litter to exit the den, chose Brock among the universities that accepted him. So we not only knew he'd definitely be flying the coop, we even had a departure date. Our life as a married couple was quickly morphing – too quickly for this sentimental sap who still wells up every time I see Shane ride off into the sunset - into the next stage.

Initially I had reason to welcome ENS and the freedom it offered from daily parental duty, especially now that my bride has joined me in the retirement pasture following an outstanding 31-year teaching career. (I say “outstanding” from a clear and objective standpoint and because I know she reads this column.) Quiet dinners for two, last-minute getaways, a concert here and there, romantic evenings watching Rock 'em Sock 'em videos – all lay ahead uninterrupted. Soon we'll be in Nova Scotia to visit daughter Annie, a rare fall-season trip for Lorraine who has spent past autumns inside a school somewhere since she entered Grade 1 at St. John's Catholic School on Markland Street way back in the previous century. More trips are planned, including no doubt a few so-called “care package” deliveries through the perpetually busy Toronto traffic and on to a certain Con-Ed freshman who now resides in a Brock U. residence.

But ENS has also given me reason to reflect on the past and times spent with our then-pre-school children, precious memories I know are gone, but won't be forgotten: Tobogganing down the incline near the park behind our home, a short, steep slope that our daughters nicknamed “Pillow Hill” after a favourite cartoon character Little Bear; “Mommy and Me” morning swims at the YMCA (I recall Tragically Hip guitarist Paul Langlois being the only other male “Mommy” in the class); walks in the wild; every visit to a farm; training for and eventually completing the long-held Kennedy tradition of swimming across Little Long Lake; walking the neighbourhood with our costumed tots at Halloween, then watching them sort wide-eyed through their booty.

Joe's absence has hit me a tad harder than anticipated. It's only been about six weeks, but at times the silence has been deafening. Gone are certain unmistakable sounds that Lorraine and I had grown accustomed to hearing around the house, and not the kind generally followed by an odor strong enough to strip paint. For instance, we miss the sound of a basketball bouncing on the floor of the rec room below, or the baseball rebounding off a convenient cinder-block wall in the same room. Thumps echoed throughout the house at any given hour of the day and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning until another sound, an authoritative female voice from above, punctured the night air: “JOSEPH! ENOUGH ALREADY! GET TO BED!” Those bouncing balls nevertheless served as unfailing 'child location' devices.

And speaking of traditions, what I miss the most are our near-daily games of catch. That too is a timeless family tradition that dates to the early '40s and my late southpaw brothers Leo and Ted and continued with mon freres Paul, Dan, and John. Catch requires two participants, two gloves, and a ball. It's played anywhere, on dirt, grass, sand, airport runways (long toss), etc. I once chipped a tooth diving for a wild throw from "The Cupper" while playing catch on the mezzanine of Queen's old Bartlett Gym. As for Joe and me, we tossed the ol' pill around, to tweak the old song title, “on the street where we live.” (Joe throws fairly hard, hard enough, anyway, to have his septuagenarian pop mulling early retirement as his private bullpen catcher.) Neighbours were used to hearing WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP! each time one of the lad's fastballs smacked into my decker. On our quiet street the sound is as familiar as a cardinal's song.

This uninterrupted father/son time together reminds me of something the great local golfer Ron Brown, winner of a record eight city golf titles, once said about the real benefit of playing a round of golf with his son Rob. “Where else these days,” Brownie observed adroitly on just such a day, “can you spend four hours alone with your kid?” That's what a game of 'catch' is to me, albeit on a far shorter time frame. Loosen up the arms, talk a bit, loosen up some more, talk a bit more, and so on. What better way to spend time alone with your growing child, especially with today's youths all but tied at the hip to cellphones and video games.

Seeing the low-hanging bunches of berries in our neighbour's Mountain Ash tree triggers another memory. I recall countless batting practice sessions with all three kids using those pea-sized orange spheres. 'Berry BP' we called it. I threw strikes from about a dozen feet away, then afterwards we'd check the bat for signs of a solid hit – the splattered remains of a pulverized berry. Many moons ago, I played Berry BP growing up on Charles Street; also Berry Tag, Berry Battles, all “berry berry” interesting. It helped that we had a Mountain Ash tree right in the backyard.

Psychology Today magazine defines ENS as “feelings of depression, sadness and/or grief experienced by parents and caregivers after children come of age and leave their childhood homes.”

The magazine clearly did not seek my wife Lorraine's opinion, which she'd gladly share if she wasn't still in traction from throwing out her back blissfully doing cartwheels once she returned to her child-free home. Far from lamenting Joe's leaving, my wife, the more pragmatic one in the executive office, takes solace in her boy's continuing climb up the wobbly ladder of life, taking that next important step. Parental pangs aside, she's a keen disciple of the “spread their wings and fly” theory, which of course is the smart, logical approach to ENS.

Me? I'd give anything to have all our kids be six again. Watch them learn how to ride a bike or blow their first bubble.

Presently, we're nearing the end of a seven-day reprieve from ENS, thanks to Brock's reading week. The youngest is back home, rising and shining most afternoons at the crack of one. Basketballs are bouncing again in the rec room. Dirty dishes are piling up. Shoes are strewn about. Clothes clutter the floor – and that's just in the bathroom! All kidding aside, it's been a splendid return to what was the normal around here for nigh on 28 years.

Do you want to know the absolutely best part about ENS? It's when - hold on a second, Joe's calling me....

Sorry, but I'll let you in on that 'best thing' another time. I'm going outside to play catch, and there are still some berries on the Mountain Ash.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com