Moving Home

Let's face it.  There is a huge (somewhat joking) stigma about young adults who move back home after college.  A Pew survey from 2011 reported 53% of 18-24 year old moved back in with their parents, at least temporarily.  And with everyone from bloggers to Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal throwing in their two cents, it seems like the horse is getting beaten to death over and over again.

I sympathize with both sides, I really do.  As a recent grad, I totally get the frustration and stress that comes with no income, high debt, and suddenly finding yourself back in the strange rut that you left years before, usually glad to see it go.  But I also completely understand how, for parents, there is suddenly another mouth to feed, more laundry, more utilities, more people fighting over the remote, and just a general stress that comes with having another adult with a totally different way of life.

Moms and Dads, let me clue you in, though.  As much as you may think we kids are looking forward to coming back home footloose and fancy free, for most of us, it sucks.  Not because we're broke, or because we can no longer make 2am runs to McDonalds without being looked down upon, or because we're sleeping on the Superman sheets we bought at 13.  It's because, at some point, the words "you live in my house" come into play.

Don't get me wrong.  I understand that it is your home, you pay most of the bills, and you have the right to set ground rules.  But a sentence like that only serves to antagonize and trivialize.  Antagonizes because it reminds us of all the ways in which we currently come up short - in debt, under- or un- employed, back in the nest; trivializes because it suggests that we are not allowed to have an opinion/our opinion is invalid because we haven't fit the mold of "success."

There has to be a better way.  Living at home doesn't have to be painful or cause a million regrets.  We all need to learn to talk to each other with love, and then maybe the process of getting on our feet won't feel so wrong.

Personal Responsibility

Over the weekend, a (assumed) drunk driver ran his/her vehicle into my grandmother's house.  Into the house.  Went through the ditch, into three trees, a flower bed, and the house, leaving tire tracks and a gaping hole, not to mention an exposed underground cable and broken plumbing and electricity in his wake.

And then, with the truck still slammed up against the house, the culprit ran off.

To me, the idea of running away irks me even more than the accident.  There have been a rash of hit and run accidents around my hometown, and it pisses me off.  Don't get me wrong, I can understand being scared of the consequences.  I can't imagine how scared I would be if I were in the same position.

I'm not saying I'm the best about taking responsibility for my actions.  I've been known to tell some white lies, and it's something I'm working on.  And even thought I admit there is a big difference between not telling someone you ate the last cookie and leaving the scene of an accident,  I see a relationship between the two.

It's all about responsibility.  Where is the line between a white lie and a gross misdemeanor? What are the signs of a bigger issue?  

How do we get it back?

Crisis Control

Lately, my life feels like one big crisis.

I'm juggling three jobs, we've been remodeling for weeks (truly, it's been off and on for a dozen years, but this is one of our on periods, which are always full of stress), and every time we turn around, someone is going to the hospital or having some kind of test done.

How most days feel.

Except I never look this classy.

The result is a sense of chaos, rushing, and constant worry about whether or not everything is being covered.

And, weirdly, I'm thriving.

Over the years, I've realized that I have two speeds: wide-open, and snail.  If things are going by slowly, breezing along, I lack energy and drive to accomplish anything.  As soon as life gets complicated, though, I'm at my best.  I speed from one thing to the next, trying to never slow down, and purposely taking on more and more responsibility until that moment when the day ends, and I crash like Rip Van Winkle.

It's a kind of adrenaline, and I'm a junky.  I love being able to take control, to fix things, to come out the other side victorious.  It's the buildup, the necessity of thinking on my feet, that makes me feel I've truly accomplished something.  And so, as I go into the next several days of unknown hours at multiple jobs, I wonder just how healthy my personality is.

This is Not a Eulogy

My grandmother is amazing.

Grandma raised 10 children.  Her husband and four of her sons were soldiers.  She lived through the Great Depression, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and this War on Terror or whatever we call it now.  She baked bread and cookies every week, cooked, gardened, grew flowers, watched birds, sewed, crocheted, quilted, sewed, and played 500 every week with her gal pals.

This is not a eulogy.

My grandmother is still alive.  I am privileged to be one of the few grandchildren who lives near enough to have spent most Sundays of my growing up years at her house, watching quintessential 90s movies, helping snap beans, stealing cookie dough, and playing the lost game of Rack-O.  I still live near, near enough to go over and see her and talk to her.  But that woman is not my grandmother.

The 94, almost 95, year old woman who inhabits her body is not my grandmother.  That woman has been lost, in part, to dementia.  I will not use this space to rage and cry against the disease which I only somewhat understand, the helplessness that is inherent in the progression, or the unfairness of being the youngest grandchild and losing this woman before I reached my milestone.

This space, this eternal bit of ones and zeros, will mark permanently for the world what I have always known: this woman is amazing.  She has shaped me and written on my memory things that I will someday, unfortunately, most likely, lose.  I accept that my fate may be very close to hers, and so I write in this place that no one can take away:

The dress she made me when I was seven still hangs in the closet.
The quilt she made me as a baby still covers my bed, and me, as I type.
No one made bread, especially cinnamon raisin bread, like my grandmother.
I will never make taffy as well as she did.
I don't even really like Cowboy Cookies, but I loved them because she made them.
I used to sit at her side on the white spinny chair and tug on her yarn while she crocheted.
I always think of her when I see a hummingbird.
She always won at Rack-O because I was too young to strategize.
I never saw my grandmother sit still until she got sick.
She is responsible for my addiction to Days of our Lives.
I hated that she put butter on peanut butter sandwiches.
She taught me how good butter is on Saltine crackers.  Especially the wheat kind.
She knew unconditional love.

This is not a eulogy.

This is the memory I will keep.