Our New Room

We’re turning your old room

Into a hunting lodge

Neither of us hunt

But we’re going to put up lots of flowers

And some fake animal heads

And confuse people

Ever since you moved out

We really thought about

What we wanted the next chapter

Of our lives to be

What themes we were interested

In exploring

And we landed on

Confusion

We want to be confusing old people

Confusing empty nesters

Who do confusing things

And worry everyone around them

Is it dementia?
Is it just old age?

Is it depression with a little bit of

‘We’re thinking about getting

A divorce?’

We want to get people talking

And we want a lodge

And the only kind of lodge we know about

Is a hunting lodge

So even though we don’t hunt

We figured we could make do

With the fake stuff

And the flowers

And people would think we were nuts

And that would be so fun for us

So that’s what we’re going with

Or we might rotate the room

From one thing to the next

Every month

Like a little display

It’ll be a gym

It’ll be an office

It’ll be the place

Where your father puts his shoes

Or where I put my yoga mat

And my shoes

We never had enough room

When you were growing up

And now we have this whole extra room
That we can do with whatever we--

Oh yes, it’s true

Marsha Zan Der Fein did keep her son’s room
Exactly the same

When he left for college

But god

How morbid

He didn’t die

He went to state school

Which, granted, is dying

If you’re from the kind of family

The Zan Der Fein’s are

But the rest of us don’t think it’s so bad

And your room was so filthy when you left

There was no choice

But to destroy everything

And start over

And once we started over

We got to thinking

And we thought--

What can the room mean to us?

Aside from the fact

That it’s where our child lived

For his entire life

Other than that

What can it mean to us?

Sweetie, you’re going to have

So many rooms in your life

Lots and lots of rooms

And, yes, it’s true

You’ll never have your childhood

Bedroom again

But that might be for the best

If you know something’s not there

You can’t go back to it

And while we want you to feel like

You can come home

Whenever you want

We also want you to find your own home

Somewhere close by

But not too close

Because then we’ll be tempted

To check in on you all the time

And if we do that

You’ll be the center of our lives forever

And we’d really like to try

Being the center for a change

At least our own center

That’s what we’re going to do now

When we’re not calling you

Four times a day

Four is reasonable, right?

The Van Der Fein’s call way more than that

And they’re out of their minds

And we don’t want to be like that

We only want to be a little confusing

And adorable

Like that old couple that lived down the street

Before they found them both in the basement

In that bunker they built

Out of tin cans

Goodness, they should have just built

A lodge

A simple little lodge

Doesn’t that sound...nice?