The Decision Is The First Adventure

It's all in the wording. "Combining households" vs. "Moving in with Mom."

"Moving in with Mom" carries a stigma, an air of regression and defeat. Couldn't make it out in the big bad world, had to turn tail and run home to Mommy and be a big overgrown kid again. It invites, to the overly-fertile (and overly-critical) imagination, a horde of imaginary yuppies with Seussian-distorted faces who circle around you in your dreams, dancing and chanting: "LOSER! Loserloserloser! Loooooo-zerrrrrr!" It also invites trouble, setting up all kinds of grounds for an unhealthy situation and dynamic from the word Go.

"Combining households," on the other hand, sounds both more challenging and more inviting. It acknowledges the realities of problem sets and families working together to solve them. In our case, the problem sets are both economic and familial. Recession's bit us and Mom both in the pocketbooks. Managing TWO four-bedroom houses between us is doable, so far, but increasingly unwieldy (that is, if we ever want to do anything "more", like rebuild nest eggs or send kids to college). Meanwhile, we're scrambling to balance between providing adequately for the children and being around to actually care for them, while Mom spends too much time "home alone" and lonely. Combining households invites Husband and Daughter and Mom and Grandchildren to all sacrifice something in hopes and faith of gaining something better.

The decision took months to come to and most of it was semiconscious, tracks we'd all followed separately and at the right time, boom, there it was, out in the open.

Could we do this?

Financial arrangements were easy enough to come to. Everyone'll come out significantly to the good. But the real questions were more subtle. Could Mom stand having us around all the time? Could we ever feel "at home" in the house that was once Daughter's home, but hadn't been for twenty years? Could we function as a three-generation household, navigating the questions of authority and undercurrents of family dynamic? Could the kids adjust to new schools, even if they are just moving 30 minutes away and could still see their current friends? What about Brother-And-Family, would they feel "pushed-out" or "second-best" or otherwise out in the cold?

It came down in the end to a cost-benefit analysis of the non-financial aspects. Could the social and familial benefits of combining households outweigh the costs? Was it worth it to Mom to have people around, to have grandchildren, a little life and noise and color back in her very quiet life again? Was it worth it to the grandkids to have Grammy around along with Mom and Dad? And what of the benefits to Mom and Dad?

We knew right well that it's countercultural and even considered weird to voluntarily combine households. To trip and fall backwards into it because of a sudden home loss or catastrophic illness is one thing; but to choose it, when Mom's still in good health and doesn't "need" people around to take care of her, when the sheriff isn't banging on the door and we don't "have to" move, when it's a good but not necessarily only option...

Yeah, it's weird. And some people will probably wag their tongues and shake their heads and say, "They're crazy!" or "What losers!" or "It'll never work!" Well, guess what. Speaking only for myself, as Daughter, I say: I am so over worrying about what other people think. It may not work - and if it doesn't, well, there's other housing out there and we can always move back out again.

The others involved can post their own seeings, but here's what I see: I see a chance to take better control of our own financial future while helping Mom out a little at the same time. Moreover, I see a chance to better know, love, and appreciate our only remaining living parent/grandparent. I see a chance even to help the environment by not spreading out five people across TWO big 4BR houses with all that carbon footprint. I see a chance to shed a lot of physical and psychic baggage and, in a sense, "start fresh".

I see a challenge and an adventure and an unforeseen, yet interesting and potentially even God-blessed, bend in the river. Decision made, let the work begin.