Many years ago when my younger son went off to college abroad, his last request to me, as he left the house, was, “Please don’t give away all my clothes and shoes.” The clothes he spoke of were a few tattered jeans and T-shirts, and a down-at-heel pair of moccasins which I knew he would never wear again. He obviously was a mind reader, since these were the very items that I had proposed to get rid of at the first opportunity. However, after his plea, there was no way that I could throw these things out, and I duly put them away. It was only a year later, when he returned on holiday, and found that he had outgrown his old things both physically and mentally, that he was willing to part with them.

I thought then that he was unusual but on a recent visit to my elder son, his wife told me in the course of conversation of how hurt she felt when, after she got married, her mother cleaned out her room and got rid of all her old bits and pieces. “It’s almost 25 years ago, yet I still feel it,” she said. “It felt as though she was saying that I no longer belonged there.” She is very close to her parents and knows perfectly well that this was the last thing that her mother would have thought, yet she has not been able to dispel this thought. She herself is a ‘cleanomaniac’, and is constantly giving away clothes and shoes and bits and bobs that are no longer in use, so her remarks came as a great surprise and I couldn’t help wondering what she will do when her daughter leaves the nest.

I am not sentimental about possessions, and though I find it hard to understand this reaction, I am beginning to realise why mothers frequently apply the same sentiment to the rooms that were occupied by their children before they left home permanently. I remember one mother whose daughter married and moved to London, insisting that her room be kept locked and exactly as when she was there. The daughter returned only for brief annual holidays, but this did not matter. Her room would always be there, waiting for her, the mother explained, a symbolic statement that where her daughter and her place in the household were concerned, nothing had changed. The house was by no means large enough to accommodate these emotional whims. Even when her son, who lived with her, got married and brought home his wife, and was desperate for more space, she was adamant about not releasing this room, a reason for considerable friction.

I have always believed that sons and daughters, in the process of getting on with their lives, are bound to know that their place in the parents’ homes and hearts is sacrosanct. This being so, surely neither old possessions nor rooms need to be retained for them to avoid feeling rejected?