Going (or coming) home again-Thomas Wolfe was wrong

      "You can't go back home" Thomas Wolfe wrote "to your family, back home to your childhood." I have been thinking about this line from a posthumous novel written almost 30 years before I was born, and of how this phrase applies as my son Andrew moved back in with us to attend school out here in Houston. Of how things change when you leave your parents' home and grow accustomed to your own life.

     After having lived in a dorm at the University of North Alabama for a couple of years, Andrew is now back home living with us and going to a commuter college out here. Situations have changed-he is no longer a minor child dependent on us for everything in his life, but an adult living under the same roof and who can make his own decisions and choices.

     We missed this change with Pamela, our oldest. She was already out of the house and seemingly halfway to Auburn by the time she graduated high school, and when she returned the next year, she only stayed a few weeks between house changes before returning to her own life. Just a brief interlude between leases was what we got. It looks like Andrew is going to be here a couple of years until he gets out of school and moves out on his own.

      The major facts about Andrew haven't changed at all-he is still thoughtful, witty, self-assured, and industrious. But new challenges crop up all the time. I try to remember to suggest instead of demanding. To encourage rather than command. To offer guidance rather than rules.
      This business of building a relationship with an adult child is not simple. When kids no longer need you to fight their battles for them or to instruct them in how to tie their shoes or toss a baseball, where do you go?

      After I get home from my morning bus route in the morning at about 9 AM, I generally make breakfast for the two of us, and we sit around and eat a leisurely meal together. I scan the newspaper and let him know about the latest scandals and fill him in on the day's crazy letters-to-the-editor from the local wingnuts. We might talk about going to farmers' markets or record stores, and make decisions over cups of coffee, decisions about events that may or may not come to pass.
     He almost always cleans the kitchen up, even without being asked. He's astonishingly helpful, and I appreciate his industriousness. Sometimes we take the dogs out for a walk, or go get groceries together.

     I think of my mom, and of how gracefully she transitioned into that next level. She never made it look hard, it was effortless. She let go quietly and smoothly but has never withdrawn from my life. I think sometimes of how well we get along together as a template, a model from which to take my cues for relating to Pam and to Andrew, and in a few years, to Sarah. Keep close, keep in contact, offer support and offer guidance when asked, but don't smother. Don't overwhelm. Let them make their own choices. Let them make their own decisions.
     Even let them make their own mistakes. That's the hard one. 

     I sure would make some decisions differently than my adult children. With my experience borne of numerous mistakes and poor judgement, I would do a lot of things differently than they do, rushing in with what seems a frightening mixture of naivete and foolhardiness. But living life too cautiously has as its curse a dryness and shallowness. Some risk-taking is necessary for success, and the exuberance of love always comes at the price of possible rejection.

     So I am heartened by the fact that my kids are now and will in the future continue to strike out in the world, to go their own way, to make their own choices, to laugh and yell and live and love, to raise their voices like Whitman said, to sound their  barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world. And meanwhile, even the words of Mr. Wolfe give me hope that some things never change:

 The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will always be the same.

      Who knows-maybe sitting around the breakfast table sharing a cup of coffee with your son is one of those eternal themes that persevere in the midst of life's upheavals and transitions.