Writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in "Do Your Parents Really Want Your Family to Come Visit?" (NY Magazine).
"In a couple of weeks my family is making our annual pilgrimage to my mother-in-law’s place, but she won’t be home for at least half of our visit. She’s written a play that will be performed in another city and has rehearsals to attend. We are all thrilled for her, and proud. And also, in a childish way, disappointed.... I wonder if some of what makes having aging boomer parents hard sometimes is that we no longer lean on these old reliable — if limiting — expectations about how old people 'should' behave. Sometimes I suspect my friends and I expect elders to behave like old-school grannies and grampies while also wanting them to be fully actualized independent people...."
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44 comments:
Progressing.
While I'd like simply to scoff because, you know, NY Magazine, I have to admit that I revert to a different version of myself when I visit my folks. And my husband, whether we're visiting his folks or his mom is visiting us, reverts hard.
While all of you take a break from your jet-setting, creative class lifestyles to visit your childhood homes, I’m still living in the fucking basement!
People are living longer. And staying in their homes. Get over it
One grows out of it.
When I went away to college and came home that first summer (never did that again), Mom was adding on a carport and my basketball goal was no longer there. I felt so disoriented & pissed. Had to walk several blocks to a neighborhood park.
Mom is still in the house (she and dad bought in '67 for 15.5K), but there is no emotional connection. I have plenty of other concerns/worries.
Wince - If joking, funny as hell. If true - Bravo. Save money and help out the folks.
We joyously await tomorrow’s semi--annual invasion of the home front by our oldest son, our DIL and our three rambunctious grandkids, ages 5, 9 and 11 (the oldest has her birthday today). Never a dull moment!
I can’t relate to the weirdness of people like Jezer-Morton. Not even a little bit.
“I wonder if some of what makes having aging boomer parents hard sometimes is that we no longer lean on these old reliable — if limiting — expectations about how old people 'should' behave.”
Sure, you can doubt your heart’s longing for parental love and rationalize that the longing derives from archaic social custom and, ‘after all, cant customs change?’
Or you can trust your heart and realize that you just aren’t as important to some people as their own aspirations and affairs, morn the lack of familial love in a selfish world, and make or find a community or group of people who do value you above themselves and freely give and receive love. And probably the easiest next step to find that is your own immediate family and progeny.
We recently moved to a new home. Yesterday, a woman rang the doorbell, hoping to see the former owners. (she lived down the street for several years). She had a very different experience with her adult children. They want her to visit (she lives 1000+ miles away) to baby-sit the children during summer break, BUT they don't want her in their house so they put her up in an Air B&B. She takes the kids to day-camp and picks them up. It wasn't clear if she was invited to stay for dinner.
On the weekend, she chose (or was told to get lost?) to spend her time elsewhere - yesterday it was visiting her old neighborhood.
What kind of children (Late GenX I believe) would treat their mother (widowed) that way?? They live in Seattle - that probably explains it.
Spoiler alert: It's worth watching Boardwalk Empire if for no other reason than to get to the scene where Nucky visits his childhood home with his father.
" There are very often new people living with our aging parents, people we sometimes don’t know very well." Really? whatever this means, it doesn't sound like a very common experience. Is she talking about a widow/widower/divorce with a new partner? I really don't get it. And with all this navel-gazing, she should just give up writing and start a lint factory.
I have memories of two homes from growing up- one that I lived in from age 4 to 7 and from 7 until I moved out for good at age 22. The more recent home burned down when I was in graduate school (no injuries). The older home may still be there but I haven't been back to the street it sat on since 1988. I miss the home I lived in from 8 to 22 and wish I could revisit it.
What kind of children (Late GenX I believe) would treat their mother (widowed) that way?? They live in Seattle - that probably explains it.
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Could be they're a product of their raising. Why does Mom let them pull that crap?
My father divorced my mother in 1972 and moved to one of the largest R governed, and most conservative, cities in America. There are no colleges in this city. It is a shitty city, IMO. My dad flew me up all the time to visit, but it always sucked, as I felt there was zero to do in the city. I have zero desire to ever see that home again, or that damn city/town.
I genuinely feel sorry for people like this who don't have strong and happy family ties, where traditional holidays (and especially Thanksgiving and Christmas) are looked forward to, regardless of varying financial and political positions. Where the ever-growing pack reassembles and reconnects playfully.
Dostoevsky's observation was that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. I disagree. I believe there is a common trait that distinguishes both of them by its presence or absence...selflessness. Those families that developed a culture of practiced selflessness (sharing, caring, giving, personal sacrifice for the benefit of other members) stay connected and stay happy. And those that didn't, don't.
And that starts with Mom and Dad not preaching it but demonstrating it for the pack pups.
My father married again and my 3 sisters didn’t take it very well.
Yes, grandma can't be there, she's at a Rolling Stone Concert.
Does anyone who write articles for these MSM publications ever have a happy normal family? They're all neurotic weirdos.
Oh my! We just had it daughter & family with us for 10 days! Happy, fun chaos! Usually our son comes at the same time. Couldn’t this year but he’s arriving today with his dog and we are thrilled. Our schedule will completely change as it did with the prior visit. Thank goodness!
Never want to get so set in my ways that family visits bother me!
There's a lot going on in your brief comments.
I first thought of just driving-by The Old House. Then I realized the "home" you were describing was a human one that still exists but has changed with the time.
My previous generation is now gone. Its members are rememberences (and new understandings) with a couple of old cousins.The three of us set off on our own paths, the minute we could.
Were we eager to prove ourselves or were we just escaping? Still not sure. We returned "home" all our lives and were happy doing so but there was a price to pay - we had to become children again. The was pleasantness but...
In some ways, the real estate drive-by brought more connection/understanding/emotion. There were no distractions or expectations.
I was reminded of a favorite auntie, years before reacting to someone saying he was going to drive by the house she grew up in. She went nuts!!! Demanded to be let out of the car. "Home" may be where the heart is but, sometimes, also where the horrors are."
I visit my cousin, there, once a year. Alwys drive by "that house" on the way to sit by my parents' graves and talk with them for a while. Four or five years years ago, for some reason, I retraced ny route and drove by the house again. The rotting carcass that had been there an hour before was being demolished and loaded in a dump truck. I took a picture. Jesus.
I drove by the house where I lived during high school years when I attended 50th reunion of same. Parked across from it and stared for a long time. I badly wanted to ring the bell and go inside. Then I went by the houses of old friends and first girlfriends. A little too real for me.
Fourteen years went by. Just one night in Cheyenne, on the road west. I didn't bother to look for names in the phone book. Drove downtown to have a look at the old high school. GONE!
So I sat for an hour in a giant empty parking lot at sunset. There had been a grammar school and a convent there, too.
It was a beautiful evening. The only building in sight was the Capitol of the State of Wyoming, across the street.
The soft summer air filled with echoes of lessons learned, confidences shared, laughter, disappointment, and bold dreams of lives to be lived. Nearly all of them buried now. It was hard to drive away. Last sonnections/Lost connections.
The best is yet to come. You gotta keep telling yourself that. Birthdays don't really matter, anymore
Peace :-)
planetgeo@1202--that was Tolstoy, wasn't it? (Happy families etc.)
My sister tells of reading a magazine article about a woman who drove by the house where she grew up in the 1970s. A woman and a couple of kids were in the front yard, so she got out and struck up a conversation. She was shown around inside the old place, which had been changed a bit, and had a very nice experience. The punch line came at the end of the article where it was revealed that it was the very house where my sister and I had grown up in the 1950s.
When my parents went to visit the old neighborhood in their white camper van, somebody thought they were casing the neighborhood and called the cops on them. You can't go home again.
There are very often new people living with our aging parents, people we sometimes don’t know very well.
Very often? Like who? A new spouse or lover? A caretaker? A live-in nurse?
Sometimes I suspect my friends and I expect elders to behave like old-school grannies and grampies while also wanting them to be fully actualized independent people.
Who's to say that grannie and grampie weren't "fully actualized?" What does "fully actualized" even mean? Is it really possible? Is it really a good thing? Kathryn's columns and forthcoming book and her mother-in-law's play may strike them as examples of self-actualization, but what if those works aren't that good or worthwhile in themselves?
NKP at 1228 - Nice post, amigo.
Appreciate it while you can.
Always get a motel.
Oh, and have them over to the motel for cheese and crackers. Everyone will laugh. Amy Sedaris is a genius about this stuff.
I had a great, adult relationship with my parents. Enjoyed them as human beings. But, I did revert when visiting…specifically and purposefully. Nothing to cause irritation or be a bad houseguest. Just little things that made my mom know “her baby” was there. It was almost a tacit agreement. I miss it.
i'm the youngest child.
While i was still in college, my parents moved out of our house, and moved back to THEIR home town.
The house i'd visit them in, was Never my home.
none the less, they (seemed) to like us visiting,
and i Know i liked visiting.
As with Most thing in NY media, i have NO CLUE what the hell they're talking about.
meanwhile Omar the Socialist Somali is going to be the Mayor of Minneapolis.
That seems more disorienting to me, than the idea of visiting my parents
Kathryn51 said...
.."We recently moved to a new home. Yesterday, a woman rang the doorbell, hoping to see the former owners."
Miranda Lambert has a song, called:
The House That Built Me
that's about her showing up at the door of her old house, and asking the new people to let her look around, it's really pretty sad.
(She asks them if they know that her dog is buried under their big tree?)
My youngest and last brother still lives in the house my parents bought in 1960; I could visit any time, but would have to sidle and snake my way through the piles of stuff. I don't think I've been over there in a year or more, though it's just a few minutes away.
A few years ago I knocked on the door of the house my father's parents built in 1948, and which we sold in 1984 after our oma's death (and a lot of renovation that we did ourselves). They are the third (I think) owners since then.
It was a nicer place than ours, and had a far higher good/bad memory ratio.
When I handed the occupants my card and explained myself, they were very generous and let me walk through and see what they had done--which were the things we always wanted to do, and would have done if we could have kept it in the family.
[cont.]
We bought a house in Vermont, and did a lot of work fixing it up. One day a woman knocked on our door and explained to us that she grew up there and that her father had planted the maple trees in the yard. I told her that one year we tapped those trees and made maple syrup, and she broke out crying and hurried out the door, and never saying another word she drove away.
[Cont.]
To wit, put a small apartment in the back of the garage; finish out the nice attic space; and enclose the tile patio behind the living room. Recently I noticed that they put a little porch over the front door too.
A lot of the big oaks in the deep back yard are gone, and they put a pool where one of the biggest had been, quite near the house. I think it's a bit cramped, but they didn't ask me.
Just glad to see the place in good hands.
All the life experiences are interesting.
My wife and I lived not too far from our parents for many years, close enough to visit often, help out with projects, or run errands for them. Did we regress to children? I don't think so. We made decisions about lots things so it was more like we were the adults in the family.
When I graduated from high school I was in the seventh house in the third state since I was born, if a three-month rental counts. I think it should. I learned the neighborhood and made friends with kids my age.
One of the houses was torn down for a freeway project. I lived in that one for six years.
The last house for me was one my parents bought mid-way through my junior year of high school. I had traveling summer jobs in college so I only lived in that house for 18 months. My parents stayed 40 years.
My youngest brother missed all the moving around. He was a kindergartner when my parents bought that last house. He really did grow up there and went to K through 12th grade with the same people. None of us older kids did that. Now he lives in the Czech Republic.
My parents have passed away and we sold the house. It has a huge garden and the buyer was anxious to get out there and do some planting. My mom felt good that it went to someone who appreciated it.
30 years ago I paid a visit to the house that I grew up in and my parents had sold. I was amazed at...wait for it...how small it was. And how that long bike ride to Elementary School or that long Bus ride to HS was...short.
Even worse, the Golf range I spent many an hour on, was now a bunch of Condos. The empty lot I played in was a bunch of condos. And the Cow pasture we played baseball in was...still there.
You can go home again, but you need to shrink your expectations.
“ and moved to one of the largest R governed, and most conservative, cities in America. There are no colleges in this city.”
From grok, I am not trying to be contrary I was just looking at it as a puzzle, I don’t see any on this list that don’t have a college.
1. Fort Worth, Texas – Population: ~918,915, Mayor: Mattie Parker
2. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – Population: ~681,054, Mayor: David Holt
3. Tulsa, Oklahoma – Population: ~413,066, Mayor: G.T. Bynum
4. Mesa, Arizona – Population: ~504,258, Mayor: John Giles
5. Arlington, Texas – Population: ~394,266, Mayor: Jim Ross
6. Lexington, Kentucky – Population: ~322,570, Mayor: Linda Gorton
7. Fort Smith, Arkansas – Population: ~89,142, Mayor: George McGill
8. Rapid City, South Dakota – Population: ~76,184, Mayor: Jason Salamun
9. Greenville, South Carolina – Population: ~70,720, Mayor: Knox White
10. Sioux Falls, South Dakota – Population: ~192,517, Mayor: Paul TenHaken.
Lovely, Planetgeo.
Ha, grok screwed up, I had to make it admit it was wrong the list of republican ruled towns is:
Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University.
• Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma City University, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
• Mesa, AZ: Mesa Community College, ASU Polytechnic Campus.
• Tulsa, OK: University of Tulsa, Oral Roberts University.
• Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington.
• Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, Transylvania University.
• Corpus Christi, TX: Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
• Hialeah, FL: No major universities directly in Hialeah, but nearby Florida International University serves the area.
• Chesapeake, VA: Tidewater Community College,
• Sioux Falls, SD: University of Sioux Falls, Augustana University.
I thought Jacksonville FL was one but they now are independent, but have Univ of North Fla and JU. So Hialeah FL is the answer, it has no college.
One's expectations should never exceed the potential.
I was the baby of three boys, growing up ages 4-20 in the same house. When I was around 40, I got a call from the Fire Chief that my mother had been evicted from the house as she had hoarded so much stuff, the furniture was not visible, she was using a W/C next door at an office building and the fridge was full of rotting stuff. The fire department had been called while she was out, due to black smoke pouring out of the chimney (turned out to be an unmaintained heating system). I came from several hours away and loaded 24 construction dumpsters of junk (12 baby buggies, for instance). She went into a nursing home. Several years later, a new owner allowed me in and I cried as it was NEAT and well decorated...the floors still creaked in the same place, tho. :>))
Our old Manila home and neighborhood, once gracious and upscale, with 1930s architecture that had somehow survived 1945, is now a slum. All the old architecture is gone, badly redeveloped to pack in vastly more people, and the rest, every nook and cranny, is choked with the usual ad-hoc slum structures. Its very sad, but probably is the inevitable result of population growth that has quadrupled the population density. The family left for the suburbs decades ago. Our grandfathers old house in our ancient Basque village (sold in the 1970s) is still there, not much has changed physically, other than that not many people actually live there full time. Its one of those places where people go visit for the summer holidays. The village is largely empty other than April-August.
President Trump regressed as President Trump regressed to The White House.
I was an Air Force brat and never lived longer than three years anywhere until college - and even then, in seven-ish total years in that one city, I lived in two base houses and five apartments.
My kids, however, had the great good fortune to spend their twelve most formative years (give or take) in one house, and very dear friends still live across the street from it - and as far as I know, it's their "forever house." Their kids are close friends of our kids - it's not just a parents' relationship - and we all still vacation together and visit one another regularly. So my kids will, I hope, be able to keep connected to that very special* neighborhood.
* And it was. To all appearances, it's just a suburban neighborhood of maybe a hundred homes. But it's such a wonderful place for kids to grow up that fully ten percent of the houses are owned by people who grew up in that neighborhood and chose to come back and buy a house there - sometimes while their parents still lived there, sometimes later. I can't imagine a more idyllic childhood for my three, including all the old-school mischief they got up to.
JoBlu - Amarillo TX.
Pro-tip for neo-Grampies: score a younger foreign wife and scandalize the family!
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