‘A full fridge of his favourites can only mean one thing – my son is visiting’

It’s been more than a decade since either of my children lived at home.

There have been returns during that time, of course. A few weeks here, a month there, as they retreated to their safe place between broken hearts and broken leases, new jobs and new starts, and, of course, a pandemic that kept us all in place.

Their lives are full, as I always hoped they would be – work, friends, places I am no longer part of – and this house, once their home, has long since adjusted to their absence, as have we.

But then, a series of unfortunate events – and the need to be hospital-adjacent – led to my son coming home for the night.

I freshened his dressing gown – the one that belonged to his grandad and that he refuses to part with – in the washing machine, then aired his bed, plumping up pillows flattened by his absence.

On his bedside locker, the books sat as he had left them – a well-thumbed copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius alongside a dog-eared John Grisham, still bookmarked halfway through.

Downstairs, the usually sparse shelves of the fridge groaned with his favourites – chocolate milk, smoothies, cream slices. Post-treatment comforts colliding with childhood remedies, the things that once patched grazed knees and softened hard school days.

And then he was home, slipping out of the car and into the house as though he had only been away for a few days. Kicking off his runners at the door as he always had, throwing his jacket onto the back of the chair where I left it hanging, resisting the familiar itch to straighten it.

He greeted the dogs generously with treats from the glass jar on the kitchen counter, and swung open the fridge door, grabbing a bottle of water in one hand and a cream slice in the other, before he went upstairs, leaving a trail of shoes and bags behind him, the cable of my phone charger trailing out of his pocket.

I stayed downstairs, wiping down the kitchen surfaces, nudging cushions back into places they hadn’t moved from, as the shower ran overhead longer than necessary and his off-key singing drifting down through the ceiling.

Fighting the urge, after the water stopped, to go up and move the damp towel that would now be lying on top of his discarded clothes as he threw himself down onto his old bed.

He greeted the dogs generously with treats from the glass jar on the kitchen counter, and swung open the fridge door, grabbing a bottle of water in one hand and a cream slice in the other, before he went upstairs, leaving a trail of shoes and bags behind him, the cable of my phone charger trailing out of his pocket

The dogs snoozed at the bottom of the stairs, one watchful eye open, waiting for the inevitable call to come up and claim their place on his bed. He was always their favourite – not me, who filled their bowls and took them out in the rain, but him: the one who came and went, who asked nothing of them.

The dogs loving him for what he didn’t do, and I was no different.

Tutting at the wonderful irritation of it all, as the old rhythms returned. The house reshaping itself around him. Floorboards creaking under his steps, doors slamming under his unintentionally heavy hand, a muttered ‘sorry, Mum’ drifting down the stairs.

For that night, he was simply back, as if he had never really been gone.

And then, as easily as he had arrived, he left again.

The door closed behind him, and he returned to his own life, his own home, as it should be, leaving behind a chocolate-milk stained glass by the sink, his damp towel on the floor, and the dogs at the bottom of the stairs, sighing softly as they settled, still listening for a call that wasn’t going to come.

There will be more hospital visits in the months and years ahead, and perhaps more short stays here for recovery.

I wish neither on him, of course. But when those times come, when life nudges him back through this door again, I can’t pretend I won’t be grateful for the small, unintended gift they carry with them. That rare and fleeting return, however brief, to the ordinary days I didn’t know were precious at the time.

To hear him again, overhead, slightly off-key.

Before the quiet returns.