The Semi-Empty Nest

Harry and I have been sharing, if that's the word, our new digs with his son.

Let's call him Tony - for the Latinate genes he inherited from his mother, which give him darkling eyebrows and a overall swarthy mein. ( All of Harry's kids physically favor their Spanish-Italian mom. Harry looks sweetly Irish, a bit pale and gorgeously blue-eyed; those genes got stomped by the dark Sophia Loren-ish appearance of their mother who when he met her was a petite, dark and nervously sultry little thing. . .Sort of like how my Slavic peasant genes were coopted by Ex's Germanic tall and pale persona. . .but I wander.

Back to Tony. Who's been staying in our attic bedroom, ostensibly to look for summer work between his second and third years at college, but actually because ours is the most appealing extra room. Otherwise, there's only his Mom's - near a seashore town with much more seasonal jobs - but it's his Mom's, and I understand she is not shy about getting on his case . . also there is his sister and her Significant Other who are friendly and welcoming, but poor and with not much space.

So it's us, with a new house and a seemingly extra room where he can hang his Grateful Dead Posters and surf the internet in peace.

Duh.

Tony's a good kid, smart and charming. But I worry about him, and I know that Harry does too. It's, what, mid July? and since the end of May all he's done is sleep till one pm, smoke cigarettes (to his credit and my harshness on the subject, on the porch) and skateboard to the occasional job prospect "in the neighborhood," usually returning within fifteen minutes to report that he had gotten an application. That he would fill out - soon, and return - soon. He does this only during the putative work week - weekends he takes time off to hang with his friends.

Harry and I can't be the first parents to notice we have somehow managed to raise kids who aren't the same class we are. I was reared on the cutting edge of rural poverty by crazy people. (Think Trueblood without the vampires or the charm, and not in the south.) Harry's parents were solidly working middle class. We (and all our sibs) arrived at young adulthood understanding that (in my case, thankful that) dependence on "family" was over; and anything gained from that point forward - college, cars, spending money - was up to us. I can't think of single instance when I even considered asking for "help" financial or otherwise from my still very fraught family. Which would have been pointless, in any case, but the point is it did not occur to me. Ditto for Harry. We moved out, got jobs, signed for our own loans, got in trouble, got ourselves out of it. It's what you did when you were old enough legally to "live your own life," to borrow a phrase from my daughter. What she means by this is "I don't have to ask permission to stay out all night, and I don't have to clean my room even if my room is in your house." Harry and I were not unusually together and responsible young folk. We just expected to take charge of our lives when the time came.

So how did it happen that our kids (now all between 20 and 27) seemingly believe in "family money" and expect to be supported in open-ended suburban adolescence - by which I mean they take it more or less for granted that they will be fed, clothed and housed, sent to the dentist, and given tuition, gas and spending money, not to mention cars, until they happen upon a job that will pay rent?

Case in point: my elder daughter, after an expensive art school degree, flirted for over a year with nannying as a profession. Didn't pay much, had zero career potential but it allowed her to spend mornings chasing toddlers around the pool without having to get married or have children first. Harry's elder son spent the summer after his fourth college year parking cars. Okay, there's the rotten economy. And both these two are now in actual jobs. But the point is, both of them (and their siblings) took it for granted they would be taken care of for as long as it took. Coming of age is more about being able to drink legally, than it was a signal of adulthood.

Don't get me wrong, both my girls, and all Harry's kids are all good kids, and we count ourselves lucky in their health and characters and general eventual promise. But the lack of urgency with which they approach taking up the responsibilities of their adult lives startles me every time.