What's that John Lennon line about life?...

I was about to settle in for the night and begin to reread The Black Swan, when all of a sudden I thought it would be both relevant and fruitful to write about the weekend’s main accomplishment: reorganizing the boxes of my possessions currently stashed in the walk-in closet of my dad’s basement. Yes, this is another episode in the chronicle of being a boomerang child (with a hopefully more lighthearted feel).

Now, the rereading was itself a distraction from reading the new book, Age of Insight, so it only seems fair to be distracted from the distraction. I’ll write about whichever book wins the battle for my erratic attention span later.

While charging in to that basement closet, swiping away cobwebs and pulling out obstacles like an old mini-vacuum cleaner and suitcases, I began to reacquaint myself with my own stuff. Stuff I haven’t been using...so I had every intention of putting at least half in a Good-Will pile.

I did not end up with a Good-Will pile.

This is in part due to genetics; both my mother and my father passed along the predilection for holding on to everything. But it was also due to the fact that this great stuff, my prized possessions, was and is meant for my future/hypothetical/imaginary home. The home that is mine. And perhaps shared with a special someone. But primarily mine.

• I have throw pillows with pretty prints, still wrapped, from Target
• Three boxes of kitchen implements, including a great 50s-60s era dish set from my grandparents’ house (which my sister Rachel couldn’t wait to part with...crazy)
• Three more boxes of Christmas ornaments, baskets, vases, and such collected from both grandparents and mom’s own stash, just waiting to be my heirlooms someday
• Posters that will probably prove to be too “college” once I unroll them
• And most importantly, my desk.

Add my books and everything upstairs, and I have all the fixings for a home crammed into someone else’s house. Yet I haven’t allowed myself to feel at home here. I’m waiting for, pining for that future/hypothetical/imaginary home.

In the past, I would focus on how I’m never going to get that home. How my career and education choices have soundly beaten that goal into dust. Not so, this evening.

I’ve always been waiting, with the expectation that things will finally start to “happen” once a certain mark is passed. First it was graduating high school, then finding employment during college and moving off campus, then working full-time, then moving to New York...you get the picture. While I was living those days and weeks and months, I did not let myself feel like I was living. I was always working toward something else, and saving things for the next future magical period of time when I would start to feel like I joined the living. The real people. Not the students, not the interns, and certainly not the unemployed.

That's totally photoshopped...

The boxes in the closet are a symptom of this waiting: a toaster that isn’t toasting, a flute that isn’t being played, a desk I’m not typing these rambling words on. We all do this, to an extent. Heck, storage companies in Manhattan base their business models on our inability to part with our stuff from/for another life.

While I have the inkling to live more minimally, whether by squirreling my stuff away or donating it, I can choose to see my boxes in the closet as symptoms of hope, as well. Like the picture of a car my mother carried with her until the day she bought the car.

And while I carry the picture of the future/hypothetical/imaginary home, I’ll try to let myself feel like I’m living because of my stuff, not in spite of it.

Multi-generational

I should be ashamed...according to some. I am a Boomerang Child.

I take a little solace in the reports of a Pew study from earlier this year that describe the 29% of young adults ages 25-34 years old that have moved back into the nest. A whopping 78% of my boomerang brethren reported being happy with their new living arrangements, although nearly that same amount say they can't afford to live the life they want. Statistical vindication for me, I suppose.

However, I found that Pew Research Center report through an editorial in my local newspaper that gave neither solace nor vindication. There's this Tom Purcell guy that lamented how unabashed we boomerang kids are. Now I'm not sure when exactly Purcell was a twenty-something, but I'm guessing early 80s. He goes on describing his career path, hopping from job to job and bad investment to bad investment before finally making the move. And he highlighted the stigma of "able-bodied fellows in their 20s, adults by any measure" who move back in with Mom and Dad.

When asked about it, he lied. This guy actually told people it was his parents who made the bad investments and lost their shirts! And if anyone knew the truth, he avoided them. Maybe that's why I can't quite hate him too much...wow, I feel the exact same way. Every time a church lady asked what I've been doing, I panicked. When my dad went into detail about my situation with a family friend, I freaked out. I don't want anyone to know. If you're reading this, and I haven't talked to you in forever, now you know why. The cat is out of the bag.

About once a week I wonder what might have been if I had soldiered on and gotten a job as a shop girl in New York, instead of Zanesville. Less frequently, I think about what I would have missed if I had not moved back. I don't exactly lie about it; I prefer to spin it as taking care of Dad and the house. I haven't really thought until just now what would have been different if Mom were still around. I might not have moved back in that case.

Despite the might-have-beens, there are reasons not to be embarrassed. Like many boomerang children, I am not a freeloader playing videogames in Dad's basement. I'm not constantly cleaning like Cinderella, either, but I consider that being human. We contribute, in rent or chores or electric bills, and, in most cases, it benefits the parents, too. I don't think my dad has had to buy toilet paper for three years now.

Anyway, what's the big deal? I can only attribute it to white American culture, this stigma, this obligatory sense of shame. It's the minorities, the immigrants, who are known for cramming multiple generations into one household. And that cramming has been a sign of poverty and desperation that better Americans either scoff at or ignore.

That's a load of bunk, though. It isn't some immigrant trend invading our shores. Back in 1940, 27.7% of adults ages 25-34 lived in multi-generational homes, according to Census data. With the current trend, builders are designing and marketing homes specifically for multiple generations to share. To be fair, part of that trend includes the reverse: parents moving in with adult children (for real, though, not just a lie to hide Purcell's shame). They do it just as we do it...when we have to.

My point is, who cares if I'm embarrassed or not? When resources are scarce, you band together to share what little you have. When your giant mess-up of a gamble blows up in your face, and you have no hope of being a fabulous Manhattanite, you move back to Ohio. Screw you, Purcell!

Honestly, though, what was once financial necessity (and, yes, with a dash of giving up in the face of adversity mixed in there, too) has almost become preferential choice. I choose to stay here...because of my teaching position, because I can put more money toward other bills, and because I've heard about others having quite a tough time finding housing of their own around here. And as a friend told me, living alone has its advantages and disadvantages.

I recall wanting my own apartment in NYC. So badly. Again, friends pointed out the obvious cons: safety, for one. There are advantages to sharing a dwelling: dividing up chores, splitting rent, sharing food, conversation (with someone other than the cat), and so on and so forth. Yet roommates are for those who have not yet "made it." College students and the like. Roommates that are parents, well...that's just crazy talk. There is the expectation that the shared living situation is temporary. A stepping stone to the American Dream of owning one's own house. Well, for me, more like renting my own small apartment.

But do I have to live alone to be on my own? Is living alone really that important to be considered successful, to be considered an adult? Does my living arrangement truly knock me back a decade in society's measure of maturity?

Why do we think in such linear terms? Trajectory, that's my enemy. High School--->College--->Job--->Family.  That is the expected and accepted path. A straight line with no detours. That is exactly what I have deviated from, by choice and otherwise. That is why some look at me with...pity? Disappointment? Fear of becoming just like me? I hopped off the well-beaten path. Though with today's trends, I'd argue there are a bunch of newly blazed trails out there. It's natural for someone who is stuck in their ways to look on this new phenomenon and tsk. I'm seeing way too much of the linear and the literal though. In this issue and in others. 

Perhaps that is why I am so unhappy so often. I don't look at the state of the world and tell myself, "That's the way it's always been." I ask, "Why does it have to be this way?" And of course, there's no answer.