Dreading the inevitabity of a potential empty nest

My son Dylan announced the other day that he wants to move to Toronto. He’s one half of my now 25-year-old twin boys.

Apparently, Ottawa sucks and it’s boring and so he wants to get the heck out of Dodge. In fact, as I write this column he’s in the Big Smoke looking for gainful employment in the hospitality industry, or at least the type of employment that will allow him to rent a room in T.O.

He dropped this bombshell on me just days after I found out that my daughter Maggie (some of you might remember her as “the Magster”) got accepted to teacher’s college at Lakehead University.

For those who don’t know, Lakehead is located in Thunder Bay, as in the Thunder Bay that is 16 hours away by car. Heck, Regina is closer to Thunder Bay than Ottawa is.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled that she finally knows what she wants to do with her life and that she has been accepted to teacher’s college, but in Thunder Bay?

Why couldn’t she have been accepted to Nipissing, or even Toronto, both of which are only a day’s drive away.

But my biggest fear beyond the fact that she will be so far away, is having to come