T A B L E++T A L K

What do you do when your child is flunking? Weigh in on grades and parental pressure in the Education area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

My son, the cross-dresser
By Lisen Stromberg
Why are tomboys cute but "janegirls" weird?
(05/27/98)

Back to my future
By Lori Leibovich
Dancing cheek to cheek with your high school self
(05/26/98)

Coming clean about her trashy life
By Lori Leibovich
In "Other People's Dirt," a housekeeper dishes about her dirty work
(05/22/98)

Violence or entertainment?
By Dwight Garner
Media violence's vicious circle
(05/21/98)

Uxorious
By Kate Moses
Uxorious: Pondering the word and why it never comes up in conversation
(05/20/98)

BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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I am waiting for my oldest son to call. I already know how the conversation will go.

"Hi, Mom," he invariably begins. "How are you?" It is a false and cheery note, always the same. Sometimes I simply say, "Fine," and sometimes I say, "Fine, how are you?" And sometimes I say, "Terrible, I'm sick, we're broke, the dog died," and so on. It doesn't matter, because he doesn't pay attention. It is only the opening gambit, our ritual.

After the groundwork, the small courtesies he's been taught to pay even though they don't mean anything to him, I get the news. It is usually good news, sometimes very good news indeed -- a great job, a new girlfriend who adores him, a wonderful apartment he's found. That he never really gets the job, rents the apartment or introduces me to the girlfriend isn't the point. The point of his news is that he is loved, he is doing well, he is independent.

After the news, the question -- the point. "Will you pick me up?" "Will you loan me money?" "Will you buy me a car?"

And again, that the question is always out of sync with the news, that the imaginary life he wants to be living is not a life requiring loans and Mom's car is not for comment. If I do comment, as I sometimes do, on the skewing of image and reality in his life, he chooses not to hear. Many times, that's when he hangs up; the thread of slow, cheerful this-and-that comes to a sudden halt and he's gone. A few years ago, he would get angry, call me names on the phone, hang up without a word. Now he just says, "Well, gotta go!" And tries again the next day.

He is my oldest child, but not entirely mine. He was about 9 when we adopted him. The injuries and influences of those first years are still very much alive in him. Working out the reasons for his irresponsibility is simple enough. Working out what to do is not -- what to do with a healthy, charming young man who can't form bonds, can't plan beyond tomorrow, can't seem to grasp the barest strand of adulthood.

He called yesterday, trying to borrow money, and to ask if he could live with us this summer. I told him to ask again today after I'd had a chance to think about it. In fact, I wanted a chance to call a few people, people he's supposed to be working with to get his life together -- social workers, teachers, counselors of different stripes. I did that; we all exchanged the various stories of his life my son tells people, got our versions straight.

When he calls back today, I'm going to say no. No, you can't live with us this summer. No, you can't even come home this weekend.

It's an old joke: Write when you get work.

An age ago, I left my parents' home. I'd been in various kinds of trouble for several years -- I'd run away, been arrested a few times, been thrown out of several of my high school classes. I hung out with people much older than myself, skirting (as I see now and didn't believe then) some very dangerous edges. I wasn't exactly trying to get in trouble all the time. I was just lost -- bored beyond belief with high school, full of inchoate passions, infected by the revolution I was convinced raged everywhere but in my dull hometown.

In the end, I was either damned lucky or just smart enough. I talked to a counselor I knew, a fine fellow who had listened to endless hours of my pubescent bullshit with kindness on his face, into pulling strings for me at the college where he worked. God knows what favors he called in, what risks he took on my behalf, how in the world he ever managed it -- but he talked someone in the admissions department into taking a chance on me.

It was like a stone rolling downhill, a small stone that was my urge to know, to not be like the people I hung out with in the park who knew nothing, cared for nothing, wanted nothing more than safety. I never told anyone except this counselor that revolution wasn't my real dream. What I really wanted to do was go to a really good school -- a fantasy school like Wellesley or Brown or Reed, and study. I was dying of untested intelligence, and I was lucky enough to find a way out.

At 16, I quit high school. That I was leaving home to go to college in another state made the whole terrible scandal of dropping out particularly puzzling to my mother. My father simply raged.

One of those moments, those vivid, tearing wounds we each carry: I am sitting on the steps in their house, my room packed up, ready to leave in a few days for something totally unknown. I have absolutely and irrevocably decided. I only know, with hidden terror, that I am going out that door. I am listening, for the zillionth time, to my parents arguing about me -- my mother's low, soothing murmur, my father's intoxicated anger.

"She'll be back," he says. "She'll be crawling back."

My mother's soft assurances.

"She's a monster," he says.

Those words, that door, my mother's unspoken fears -- I could not possibly come back. I never considered it, even when I was down to my last few dollars. I visited sometimes and my mother sent me a little money now and then. But from the day I left, no one ever mentioned the possibility that I might go home again.

I know that my experience -- my internal experience as well as the situation -- has affected how I react to my teenage children. I haven't felt any particular urge to hurry them out, the way I hurried. I am sad with all the mistakes I made over the years, the things I didn't do, did wrong, did badly -- like all parents. But I did what I could, as well as I could. My oldest son has had so much help, so many people on his side for so many years, he's like a walking social work directory. Many people like him. Many people, for many years, have offered him jobs, a place to stay, endless years in school, in community college, in job training. He charms them and eventually disappoints them -- skipping classes, breaking gifts, losing jobs, throwing away money. He's been bailed out of legal trouble and picked up at emergency rooms; he's been given so many second chances I've lost count. That might be part of the problem. He still hasn't tasted the real bitterness of consequence.

So. He turns 21 in a few weeks. His eligibility for a couple of training programs ends then. He has no job, no place to live and very little money, but he's still scamming people, telling stories and lies, breaking rules. He wants to come home, because home is where he thinks those things don't matter.

He's not a monster. But this time, I'm going to be. This time, I say no.
SALON | May 28, 1998