The truth is, life changes and either we grow and change with it or we get left behind. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. The old ways that we knew, the patterns that we had found that worked, may not work forever. And so it is in a family.
The children are nearly grown. The girl has been away to college for a year and is now home for the summer. She's been the independent one, always on the go, but now she's had foot surgery and is pretty close to completely dependent on the family. The boy has just completed his Junior year in high school and is in his end run coming up on Senior year. He's driving and he has a summer job, but he also has a new batch of friends that he's running with. Always the quiet and shy one, now he's 6'4" and the leader of his pack.
We thought we had this parenting thing down pat. After all, we'd been doing this for over 19 years. You know, you feed out the rope, they run with it as far as it stretches, they grow, they learn, they fall down, we reel em back in and send them back out to run again. It's been working for this long. We got the girl off to college and she was doing really well. We figured all we had to do was get the boy there too and we'd have it made. We didn't bank on the changes that have to happen in order for that to take place.
POINT OF CONTENTION #1: "I'm an adult."
So now we have one 19-almost-20 and one 17-almost-18. I'm willing to concede that they're adults, or nearly there. I trust them to run to the store with my debit card. They get to come and go without a curfew. They have their own bank accounts and go solo to their appointments (or at least the non-important ones). They have cars and we trust them to come and go as they need to.
POINT OF CONTENTION #2: "I still want to be a kid."
They still fight like five year olds and expect Mom and Dad to mediate. They make horrendous messes and gripe and complain about having to clean them up. Getting anyone to do household chores, even the ones they used to do, is like moving a mountain with a teaspoon. All of a sudden they have selective hearing. Unless they need gas money. Or money to go to the movies. Or to go to Starbucks. (insert monetary request here: "I need_______________")
POINT OF CONTENTION #3: "I think this should be MY house."
This was the straw that broke the camel's back. All of a sudden, there are boys that come over and stay for days and days and days. They eat everything in the house like a pack of locusts. They take over the dining room to play Magic (the card game). They take over the living room TV. They play music in the bedroom with the door open so loud that you can't hear anything else in the rest of the house. They come and go in and out the doors, in and out, in and out, until it feels like Grand Central Station. You can't have a conversation without them butting in. And God forbid you try to read a book or relax. There's no place to do it. We have found ourselves chased out of our own house, coming in only to cook dinner and use the bathroom. Where the girl was gone too much, the boy stays home. He and his whole crew. There are dishes all over the place and the F-bomb flies rampant. There are people wandering around the house at 3 a.m. because they don't sleep on a regular schedule, since it's summertime and they are teenagers. I can't plan on dinner, because I can't afford to feed three or four extra mouths, and I surely can't make the nice little steaks we have in the freezer waiting for it to be just us four family members.
And the worst thing is that it's not breaking the house rules, per se, because we never anticipated these problems in order to make rules about them. Rules? We GOT no steenkin' rules, amigo!
It's taking its toll on us, on our relationship. Neither one of us knows how to fix it. We know it's broken, and rampantly spiraling out of control. We know in the abstract how we need to handle it- we need to stand up to the kids and set some new rules, ones that work for almost-adults living in limbo before we push them out of the nest. But both of us are paralyzed, not sure how to do it. So we grow ever more frustrated and snappy with each other. To top it off, B quit smoking about two months ago, so he doesn't go out into his 'quiet zone' either, since it reminds him of smoking. So we sit on our hands, seething, looking at each other and wondering when it will all end.
I miss my husband. I miss my family. I miss my quiet and the hour or so of wind down time after work that we used to have. We see the family counselor on Monday, B and I, hoping he can help us draw some lines in the sand for this new family dynamic. I sure hope he has a whole bunch of new tools for us to add to our toolbox before we all splinter to the four winds. Or before we pull our hair out. Or worse, before frustration makes someone say something they can't take back.
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