Broken Families

Clarissa

Dec 2

I was talking to a woman who works for a neighboring department, and she said she really missed her adult son.

"Oh, where is he?" I asked.

"He lives two blocks away from us," she said and explained the exact position of the houses in respect to each other.

"So what happened?" I asked, thinking there had to be some serious conflict.

"Nothing," the woman said. "We are just so busy with our lives. He's busy with his family."

Another woman standing nearby piped up with a similar story about her adult children.

This strikes me as very American and very bizarre. For the life of me, I don't understand this absolute desperation to sever all contact with one's children the moment they turn 18.

These two women are support staff. They aren't college-educated. With my professor friends, it's not as bad but they pretend it is. One friend tried to conceal that her adult daughter moved in with them in the summer between college and nursing school. It took me weeks to pry it out of her. She thought I'd decide her daughter was a loser if I knew about it.

I had a very profound relationship with my father until the day he died. He knew everything about my writing, what stage each article was, the names of all my colleagues and the details of their lives. We talked every day for long stretches of time. And none of this prevented me from having my own life or made me a loser. To the contrary, it made my life enormously better.

I just don't get how you live two minutes away from your relatives and you are too busy to see them. Busy doing what, exactly? What do people do? My sister comes with the kids to live with us for two months every summer. I go over to stay with her in Canada every time I can. How come we aren't too busy? I know every detail of her life, the names of all her friends and colleagues, everything. I know what my mother ate for breakfast yesterday. And the day before. She's a very difficult person but we talk. Every day. For at least an hour. And before her sisters moved in with her last September, they talked on Skype several times a day. I don't get how people are too busy for all this.

This is a cultural thing I'll never understand.