Ball and Chain

I’m watching the item on 60 Minutes about twenty- and (gasp!) thirty-something children who’ve never left home.

I left home when I was twenty-three, which was plenty late enough. I moved back for the last six months of my thesis three years later, when my funding ran out, which extended into the period of my unemployment and saving up the deposit for this place—just over a year in total. Harvestbro had moved back in too and for eight months it was fun but cramped times—three houseloads of furniture in a modest space. He left for Melbourne and then I moved in here a few months later.

I think the fact that h-bro and I are quite different from our folks facilitated our permanent departure. We’ve each in our own way had to labour pretty hard at a working relationship with our parents as adults, and they with us, with lots of negotiation and compromise along the way. As much as I love them, I wouldn’t elect to merge our households again unless something really dire happened. In the same fashion, h-bro and I agree we should never live together; it’s likely our physical separation that preserves the aroha between us. Six or seven years ago we were at the peak of a long fight that flared up like a slow-burning fire every few weeks.

I wonder too if the fact all the families featured on the news item seem to have bedrooms the size of small sleepouts provided incentives to stay home. One reason I moved out was to move into a bigger room, and when I moved in here I had nearly a whole houseful of furniture already. (I have hoarding tendencies!) I was mindful enough of the fact that I left home around five years later than those who had come to university from out of town, and coming home for that year, though a break from penury, was still a loss of face. Considering I was content as a child to be the one always hanging around her Mum, it’s amusing the way things have turned out.