I forget whether I ever mentioned this, but last spring Son 1 asked me for $1000 because Wife had stuck him with an unexpected bill on the excuse that she was doing him a favor. I gave him the money but warned him that with it would come a certain amount of advice. There followed an email telling him how to set up a budget (to which I got no response). Several months later I sent him a second email, about how to disentangle his affairs from Wife's, so that if she declares bankruptcy it doesn't pull him down too. (I got no response to this one either.) Finally last night I sent him a third installment:
Some day, the people at your work might offer you a promotion that includes a relocation. Depending on how things are going at home, you might feel obligated to turn it down because if you move to Greenland or Langley or Some-place-I've-never-heard-of then that might be tough for your Mom.
ADVICE: NEVER TURN DOWN A PROMOTION. If you do, chances are that they won't ask a second time: they'll just pass on to the next guy. And if the promotion means moving to Greenland or Langley or Wherever, that's normal in your line of work. And you need to prioritize YOUR life, not someone else's.
This has come up a few times. Any job change that involves a move will invariably involve bringing mom with me most likely.
Oh great. Just bloody wonderful. So it has already happened. And here I hoped to be ahead of the curve.
Isn't this exactly what I worried about, back when she first moved in with him? That she would never leave? And sure enough, that seems to be exactly what has happened. She has settled in like the Old Man of the Sea. She thrives by eating his substance. In a sense, she lives by eating his life.
This is cannibalism.
I tried to impress upon him that this is morally wrong, saying in part:
It is the job of the parents to support and launch their children, not to feed off of them.
(And see also this conversation here, with his brother.)
Son 1 was unimpressed and noncommittal:
I mean mom has a spare few years left. What happens, happens.
I replied that for all he knows she might live to be 95, at which point he'll be more or less my age. I tried to urge that time sneaks up on you, and you don't have forever to play with before it's too late to start living your own life. He didn't reply to that one.
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The eerie thing is that I can't tell which of us is approaching this question with greater maturity and wisdom. I can spin the arguments so they favor either side.
On the one hand:
It's easy to tell myself that he is being too short-sighted, just taking the easy path. Sure, it's easy not to pick a fight by telling your impoverished mother that you are throwing her out into the street. (Impoverished here is an umbrella term that also means improvident, spendthrift, friendless, isolated, offensive, and alienating.) Sure, it's easy to figure that with all her crazy health conditions, she's going to die any time now and you won't have the hard decision on your conscience. And if he could slide out of having to look after her and still be 21 years old, why not do it that way?
But he's 27 now. That's not the end of the line yet—when I was 27 I was still working at a nothing job going nowhere—but it's already getting on in years and maybe my example isn't the best one to follow. I was aimless for a long time before I finally lucked into a job that allowed me to pull it together. What I hear is that if you want a Grand Career then every year counts. Son 1 has great ability—most remarkably, he seems to have the superpower of being able to make everyone like him. That's not easy (I say from experience) and in principle it should take him far. But it won't take him far if he chooses not to go anywhere because he's lugging Wife around. And if you wait too long, the train pulls out of the station without you. As my father used to say,
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Of course as his father I want great things for Son 1, and I don't want to see him bound in shallows and in miseries.
On the other hand:
My father could have said the exact same thing about me. But I didn't want the bright, shiny future that he wanted for me. I didn't know what I wanted instead, and it took me years to figure it out. Also, the one thing that I knew I wanted was to make a success of my marriage. (Oops!) I knew that I had married a difficult woman, and that I was going to have to work hard at the relationship. And I did. Day by troubled, agonizing, unpredictable day, that's what I worked on. And over time I got better. Some time ago I began framing my big accomplishments in my life in moral terms (as a husband and a father), not career terms.
What if Son 1 does the same thing? Yes of course he has a superpower that makes everybody like him. So what? Does that mean he has to become President? Of course not—no more than my equivalent powers (superior intelligence and a good memory) mean I have to win the Nobel Prize. Would it be flattering? Of course. But it will never happen, and I know that.
This is one place where the doctrine of reincarnation becomes a huge consolation. No single human life can do everything. But if we can feel confident in the prospect of multiple lives, then we can decide to compartmentalize. In this life, we will focus on these topics (like marriage and family, or looking after a feckless mother); but that still leaves the possibility that in a future life, we can do something else (brilliant career, undying fame).
Does Son 1 believe in reincarnation? I don't know, but I don't think so. That may make his choice even more heroic.
In the end, I know I don't have all the facts because I don't know what's going on inside Son 1's head. If he is relying on assumptions that will never come true, if he wants greatness but thinks he can afford to wait for it, then I know that he's wrong. But if he has already (mentally) left the arena, if he sees the challenge of his life (or at any rate of this life) in altogether different terms, then all of my concerns are beside the point.
I don't know which it is, and I don't even know if there is any way to initiate the conversation with him so I can find out. I don't want to see Wife devour him alive. But I don't know how he sees it, and I may never know.
It's sad.
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