21 Nov 2020

Your home is quite easily defined as your nest.

Whether your home is a McMansion in the western suburbs, a large family home in the suburbs, a flat, or a room, we style our nests into something that makes us comfortable.

A nest is where we can relax, raise our offspring or our adopted offspring – whether they be four or two legged – and be ourselves.

Your nest may be crammed full of special things you can’t bear to part with, or spotlessly tidy with clean air and space, or a happy mess that reflects your life and personality.

It’s your nest. How your nest looks has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else.

I get a little put out when people comment on the amount of ‘stuff’ in my nest. Whether it’s the ‘my goodness you really have a lot of photos on the walls’, or the ‘gee you have a lot of furniture’, or the ‘is the remote control somewhere in amongst that stuff in the coffee table?’ – it’s my nest, dammit. If you don’t like it go find another nest.

Of course how the nest is ‘decorated’ is in the eye of the beholder – or the cleaner, if you will. Family members have to put up with how the nest looks. Youngsters you can indoctrinate into thinking that that’s how nests are supposed to look. Partners are welcome to express their opinion, and if they are keen enough to take over the household management, then maybe you could be prepared to tolerate their ideals in nest presentation. If not, they have to learn. Or fall out of the nest. Maybe with a little shove.

Empty nest is a term that gets bandied around a bit. It refers to that amazing time when your fledglings fly off and find another nest. In the human world, sometimes your fledglings come back to the family nest. Sometimes they also bring a lot of stuff back with them.

There are times too, when fledglings fly out of the family nest, that they leave a good portion of their nest building supplies behind – just in case you miss them so much, I guess. If you find yourself missing your fledglings, you could tip some Lego on the floor and wander across it, just for old times sake. Or maybe throw some towels, or some empty toilet rolls, on the floor.

My returned fledgling has re-left the nest today. We are not quite sure whether we are ready for him to go, but we have bits of Lego and train set detritus to trip over for a while, just in case we miss him too much.