05/13/2007

Freedom interrupted for parents, too

By Kathy Gibbons
Features editor
kgibbons@
record-eagle.com

Read Kathy's past columns here

A woman who works at a shop I visit stopped me the last time I was there.

"So,” she said, "when are you going to write about what it's like having the college kids home for the summer?”

Her son went off to school for his first year last fall. Something in her tone told me he was not only back, but that his homecoming wasn't exactly living up to billing.

Sure enough, she went on to detail how this boy she was so sad to see leave has returned and created havoc. He sleeps late and stays up late. His room is a wreck, with nothing put away yet and not a speck of floor space visible.

She'd had it, and that morning had left him a note. On a big piece of paper. Scrawled in red. With the words, "THIS IS NOT WORKING FOR ME.”

I thought that was pretty funny. With two kids in college, I have a theory. Most of them leave and don't look back. If they give your pathetic little life any thought at all, it's not unlike how they view their toys as children. If they weren't playing with their toys and enjoying them, the toys were put on a shelf or in a closet, forgotten.

Many of them don't imagine us having any life or function of any significance if it doesn't include them. In their minds, we sort of freeze and fade to black after they leave, only to come back to life upon their return.

It would never occur to them — at least, unprompted — that upon their leaving, we might, after the initial despair and kittens-torn-away-from-their-mother phase, actually create a new and enjoyable life without them. Just like we brought them in and closed our circle around them as newborns, we somehow manage to send them out as young adults and fill around the void.

They don't realize that their newfound freedom is also ours. They don't think we might actually like coming home at night to the same order, or disorder, we left that morning; to computer hookups that aren't rearranged, gas tanks — and fridges —- that aren't empty, and toilets that aren't plugged (boys).

And we have to get up and work mornings. They are probably working, but it may not be in the morning, and anyway, sleep for them can be a perk, not a requirement. Not so parents, who may have a hard time falling asleep to late-night comings and goings and video games and unlocked doors and all the rest.

So I'm writing this for the mom who suggested it, and all the others whose college kids are newly back home. My thoughts? Enjoy the best of them, and there's an awful lot of that, especially as they become more like roommates and friends than children. Grit your teeth through the stuff you can tolerate. Speak up about the stuff you can't. Make sure they are working — preferably overtime.

And it will be fall before you know it.