Dawn Is Me

One of the nice things about being a habitual thinker is that it really doesn’t take much to get you started.

Right now, one of the Big Deal things that’s going on in my house is the fact that Gina is preparing to head off to college next month — with attendant nervous breakdowns occurring in different ways for different reasons among the different people in my house.

(NOTE: Kimmie is better, not ‘fine’ but better.)

This morning, I’m considering Gina’s particular nervous breakdown. She is worried about leaving home in the way that teenagers who are leaving home for the first time often do (‘How do I do … everything?’).

I thought about that when I was reading this, which reminded me, in its turn, of a certain episode from my twenties.

I got married when I was twenty-four and, in spite of the fact that I really hadn’t lived at home for more than three consecutive months since I was sixteen, I was also acutely aware of the fact that I hadn’t really been out on my own, either.

‘How did you arrange that?’ I hear you ask.

Simple. I finished high school at a boarding school in Virginia (scholarship student, in case you were wondering). When I went to college, I spent most of my vacations and summers at school and when I left school (without a degree), I moved into an apartment in Queens with my then-boyfriend. When we broke up, I moved out of his apartment into a dorm room at another college, having decided that giving higher education another try was preferable to trying to support myself in New York City.

From there, I moved in with my then-future spouse and his mother and, after a few more gyrations as I flitted through my twenties in typical air-headed style, Gino and I got married.

So, about a year and a half later, I was suddenly seized by a need to prove to myself that I could live on my own and take care of myself. So, I moved out of our apartment and “officially” separated from my spouse — much to his dismay — got an apartment in Park Slope and set about making a point.

I probably don’t even have to explain this but the point I was trying to make was that I hadn’t married simply to provide myself with somebody to take care of me, that I could take care of myself. That was important because I wanted to make sure I was with my husband because I wanted to be and not because I was afraid. I’m not sure if I was ever able to make him understand that but, more than twenty years of wedded bliss later, I doubt it really matters.

I’m thinking about this now, as I think about Gina and her jitters. It is entirely possible, even fashionable in this day and age, that Gina will go to college, get her Master’s Degree, and enter the workforce without ever truly leaving home. But, when I think back to that episode and I think about HeatherB, I find myself wondering if she will reach the point where she really just has to prove to herself that she can do it on her own.

Or if, as I fully expect, her college experience will instill in her a greater appreciation of not having to live in her mother’s house and abide by her parents’ rules as an adult.

And I wonder if she really understands that I have no plans to throw her out of the house when she reaches a certain age (of course, I can’t speak for her dad). And it’s not that I want to keep my kids with me eternally.

It’s just that I have a feeling I won’t have to kick them out. At some point, they’ll want to leave. And that is as it should be.