Lhe back to school in the fall has a hidden side. Each student who moves in is a child’s room that empties. Every child’s room that empties is parents who don’t know what to do with their melancholy. “The departure of my eldest daughter broke my heart. Is it supposed to be natural, this horror? writes Frédéric Beigbeder in his latest book, A dam against the Atlantic (Grasset). I will not let anyone say that the departure of an adult child from the family home is anything other than a disaster. »
Some are proud, pretend to wonder about this empty space to recover, say they are not unhappy at not having to do dinner anymore, but feel like everything when registration papers ask them to write the address of their child. How come it’s not ours?
How do we recognize them?
They tried to convince their offspring that an Erasmus in Brussels was much more interesting than a year in Tokyo. They have become knowledgeable about the different districts of Reims, Dijon, Tours or Strasbourg. With the car full, they drove there singing and talking about things they never talked about and back on their own rewinding the movie, wondering what they would have done differently if they had known that everything it would go so fast. They loved the dinette side of the installation races, as if each object would be an extension of themselves when their child opened the cupboard. They bought a cheese grater, a lemon squeezer and lots of equipment that their child will never use while they, back in the empty apartment, eat cheese standing in front of the fridge. Since the start of the school year, when they go shopping, they mechanically take Danettes or Whaou pancakes!, like former smokers who would still pick up boxes of matches, and put them back on the shelf after reflection.
During the day, they go from time to time in the room of their big kid gone and stay planted there looking around them. They are outraged by the train ticket prices. They can’t help but compare their little one’s living conditions with theirs thirty years earlier and don’t quite know what to deduce from it. They want to hang up when their friends tell them that it’s in the order of things or that it’s another life that begins and do not know what to answer to all these sadistic morons who throw at them: “So, are you two going to meet again?” »
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