Birthday Boy
My younger son is 26 today. He has recently moved back home to live with me after nearly three years on his own. He has a good job—in Spain, any steady job is good when you’re 26—and makes enough to support himself, even living alone. But not enough to live alone and do the other fun things he likes, like go out every weekend, buy nice clothes, and travel. He’d rather live with his mom and be free to do these other things than be free of his mom.
A roommate would have allowed him to continue living independently, but roommates are hard to come by in Spain. Most people in their 20s live with their parents unless they live with a partner, no matter whether they are studying or working or on the unemployment lists. College students often share an apartment out of necessity, but even more often, they study in their hometown or close enough to keep living at home. It’s easier and cheaper, and there’s no shame in doing so. No shame either, as I’ve verified when talking to my college students at the language academy where I teach, in having no household responsibilities. Studying is enough.
So young people do not aspire to moving out, as I and my friends in high school did. For us, 40 years ago, leaving home was a rite of passage, the first step toward being independent. Instead, for Spanish students, getting a degree or professional training and then landing a job is the aspiration. For many of my students at the academy, going to college is like a continuation of high school—they have no sense of breaking free onto the wide plains of adult life, with freedom in the air. Who wants to be free anyway when the good food and clean straw are in the trough and stall you’ve always known? My neighbor’s son, the same age as mine, earned a double degree in math and physics at the local university, close enough for him to commute. Then he went to Amsterdam on a scholarship for a master’s in astrophysics. Was he ready for that much independence? Such a smart guy, but did he know how to cook and clean? For two years his retired father made frequent trips, ostensibly to visit him but really to make his son some homecooked meals and do his laundry. The father was sheepish yet glad to be of service. That is parenthood in Spain. Many parents I know who have grown children shake their heads in amazement as they compare what they were capable of at 24 or 27 and what their offspring can manage. There is no comparison.
As for those young adults who do not reside in the family home, many will live rent free in a home provided by a family member: an empty apartment belonging to an uncle or a grandmother, for example. I even know a grown woman, married and with a daughter, who lives in an apartment she bought with money given to her over the years by parents and grandparents, and who reaps the rental income on another apartment she owns, inherited from an aunt. Even so, her electricity bill and the gas for her car are covered by her parents. And she’s not 25 and struggling but in her 40s. Her parents are not destitute, and they do not lack for anything they need, but they don’t live as well as she does. She doesn’t lack for anything she wants.
Over Christmas, my son traveled to Morocco for a week of vacation. He could have afforded the trip even if he were still on his own, but not also save for the future. And because he could have spent the night with a friend in the city, he didn’t need me to get him to the train station at six a.m. But I took him because it was easier for him that way. So, though he does not need me, he can certainly use me. And that’s fine. Isn’t that what kids do, the world around? Until they find they’ve got more to give than to gain, and the pendulum swings the other way. At which point, when it occurs for us, I might move into my son’s home, abide by his rules, and learn to fit into his life rather than poke and prod to get him to follow my rules.
So he’s home. It’s a different, smaller, cozier home than the one he grew up in. It’s in Pola de Siero, not Gijón, but it’s home because his mother is hovering close by, chiding him about the state of his room and reminding him to clean up the kitchen immediately after using it, instead of later, when he feels like it. In that way, having him in the house reminds me of old times. It’s an improvement, though, in that if he’s late to work because he didn’t hear the alarm, that’s his problem, not mine. If he doesn’t sleep enough, that’s his choice, not mine. If his laundry isn’t done, that’s on him, not me. A relief.
New home or old, parent of a grown son or an adolescent, whether you have to or not—you want to do what you can. I hear the alarm, and when he shuts it off but doesn’t appear, I don’t think this is a lesson in the learning—too late to worry about lessons—but a problem to fix. I wake him up. And I often take the easy way and clean up the kitchen myself. No wonder he is glad to be here. Independence is just another word for tightening your belt, and who wants to do that when you’re invited to relax and loosen it instead? For my son’s birthday, I made the same cake I have made for 26 years, and I was happy to do it. It’s always delicious.
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