Tuesday, August 21, 2007

You can never go home again... well, I can't, anyway

In so many movies, a character going through some kind of quarter-life crisis ends up back at his or her parents' house, staying in his or her old bedroom which was a hermetically sealed time capsule from when they were 17.

This trip down memory lane always ends up providing this character with much needed introspection and a solution to whatever his or her outstanding issue and he or she ends up living happily ever after.

It's weird to me to think of parents keeping an homage to their children like this, years after they have moved out. When I was 16 (or so), I ran away from home for two days* and when I came home - after 2 days - my mom had taken all of my posters off of the walls and packed up a bunch of my stuff - "I didn't know when or if you were coming back," she had said.

Today, if you went into my mom's house**, (granted, she's moved several times from the house where we lived when I was in high school) you wouldn't even know she had kids (or grandkids). When she was moving away from Phoenix and unloading a bunch of her crap onto me***, she opens a dresser drawer and lifts out a stack of every picture I've ever given her of my son. She offers them to me and says that she doesn't know she'll have room for them in her new (23oo square feet for 2 people and a dog) house.

I would assume that my mother's refusal to provide any stability to me contributes to my desire for permanence (see: tattoos, ambition to be a published author) yet inability to achieve it (see: moving every 2 years, inability to cultivate friendships).


*I did it more to watch out for my trainwreck of a BFF than because of any major issue of mine

** God help you if you do, make sure to pack earplugs and some Pepto Bismol

***said "crap" included expired and/or half-eaten food, broken Christmas decorations and a deep fryer covered in a thick patina of antique grease and dust.