Dept. of Home Making
Saturday, 20 October 2012 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rSo Long and Don't Forget the Cowhorns, Take Two
So. FB's moving out tomorrow. Again. And I'm amazed at just how mixed my feelings are about it.
I'm elated, because it gives me back my livingroom. It also gives me back my son, the one I'd really grown to like; the one who came to visit once or twice a week, and who really enjoyed being an adult around his parents.
While it's amazing how well we got along during these past three months or so - once again, reminding me of how close a trio he, BB and I were as he grew up, for both better and worse - it also was inescapably clear that we could fall back into some of the bad old habits that dogged his last few years with us before the first move out.
FB and I, as BB has noted with slightly dismayed bemusement (or is that bemused dismay?) have always been rather more like close but quarrelsome older sister with much younger brother than we have been mother and son. And close quarters between an irritable, unsure mother and a shy kid - out-talked by louder parents - with a bad tendency to oppositional dialogue and dynamics? Well, you do the math.
He's deserved being an adult for a long time. I think we all thought the whole "grow up and have one's own home" had been achieved. Things went pear-shaped with a rather cruelly creative vengeance and, voila, there he was, back on our couch, saying "I don't want it to be like it used to be."
And now it's shortly to be, once again, not like it was, which, luckily, it didn't ever get.. No, don't even try to parse what I just wrote. I can't.
He's found a studio apartment. It's small, but not insanely so. It's probably only a little more expensive than he thinks it is. And - this is important, y'all - he will be living by himself for the first time in his life.
Hence, of course, the "mixed" part of my feelings.
He needs to live by himself. He's going to be 28 ... no, wait, today is the 20th, he's actually 28 today.
*pauses*
Sweet weeping ....
*is overwhelmed*
By the time I was 28, I'd been living more or less on my own for a decade. But FB, BB and I, were always so close that one of the down sides was FB's slow introduction to independence. When he left the first time, it was to live with someone else, someone with whom he was deeply involved.
As he said when we asked him why the hell he didn't save money by going in with a room mate, damn it, "I've never lived by myself. I want to be able to shut the door and keep everyone out."
And I'm afraid for him. Stupidly, irrationally, possibly logically. All the stupid questions bounce around in my practical Martha-not-Maryish head; will a studio suffocate him? Can he handle juggling payments and bills and not having the little extras he likes? Will living alone be not nearly as wonderful as he thinks it is? What will it be like in the dark for him when there's no one else there and he wants someone to hug him after a bad day? (Yeah, that's stupid and irrational ... 28 and a man grown, damn it, kaffyr!)
In the end, it doesn't matter one whit. Because what he says is right.
Wish him luck, if you would. Wish him smarts and patience and self-discipline. And more of those things. And maybe a bit more. And wish him a mother who is less prone to over thinking and panicking.
So. FB's moving out tomorrow. Again. And I'm amazed at just how mixed my feelings are about it.
I'm elated, because it gives me back my livingroom. It also gives me back my son, the one I'd really grown to like; the one who came to visit once or twice a week, and who really enjoyed being an adult around his parents.
While it's amazing how well we got along during these past three months or so - once again, reminding me of how close a trio he, BB and I were as he grew up, for both better and worse - it also was inescapably clear that we could fall back into some of the bad old habits that dogged his last few years with us before the first move out.
FB and I, as BB has noted with slightly dismayed bemusement (or is that bemused dismay?) have always been rather more like close but quarrelsome older sister with much younger brother than we have been mother and son. And close quarters between an irritable, unsure mother and a shy kid - out-talked by louder parents - with a bad tendency to oppositional dialogue and dynamics? Well, you do the math.
He's deserved being an adult for a long time. I think we all thought the whole "grow up and have one's own home" had been achieved. Things went pear-shaped with a rather cruelly creative vengeance and, voila, there he was, back on our couch, saying "I don't want it to be like it used to be."
And now it's shortly to be, once again, not like it was, which, luckily, it didn't ever get.. No, don't even try to parse what I just wrote. I can't.
He's found a studio apartment. It's small, but not insanely so. It's probably only a little more expensive than he thinks it is. And - this is important, y'all - he will be living by himself for the first time in his life.
Hence, of course, the "mixed" part of my feelings.
He needs to live by himself. He's going to be 28 ... no, wait, today is the 20th, he's actually 28 today.
*pauses*
Sweet weeping ....
*is overwhelmed*
By the time I was 28, I'd been living more or less on my own for a decade. But FB, BB and I, were always so close that one of the down sides was FB's slow introduction to independence. When he left the first time, it was to live with someone else, someone with whom he was deeply involved.
As he said when we asked him why the hell he didn't save money by going in with a room mate, damn it, "I've never lived by myself. I want to be able to shut the door and keep everyone out."
And I'm afraid for him. Stupidly, irrationally, possibly logically. All the stupid questions bounce around in my practical Martha-not-Maryish head; will a studio suffocate him? Can he handle juggling payments and bills and not having the little extras he likes? Will living alone be not nearly as wonderful as he thinks it is? What will it be like in the dark for him when there's no one else there and he wants someone to hug him after a bad day? (Yeah, that's stupid and irrational ... 28 and a man grown, damn it, kaffyr!)
In the end, it doesn't matter one whit. Because what he says is right.
Wish him luck, if you would. Wish him smarts and patience and self-discipline. And more of those things. And maybe a bit more. And wish him a mother who is less prone to over thinking and panicking.
