Why I Live with My Mother

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I sleep in my old bedroom and eat dinner at the kitchen table with my mom every night. But Mom and I are different than we used to be. Plus, home isn’t just the place where I live anymore. Six months ago I quit my stinking rotten day job and started working—I mean, 'writing'—from home. When I first joined the ranks of the self-employed, I joked to friends that I would emerge at the end of my tenure as a freelancer like Grizzly Adams, completely desocialized and speaking my own guttural language. This hasn’t quite happened. But something has changed within me, a change that didn’t take place when I was living with friends and spending all my available energy 'discovering' myself. When I was 20, I needed to become myself the only way I knew how: by leaving. Now that I’m back, I think I’ve begun to learn what independence really means.

I am, after all, an adult now, capable of having a grown-up friendship with my roommate—er, mom. Last weekend she and I went for Chinese. After stuffing ourselves full of fried gooey stuff we broke our fortune cookies, and here’s what mine said: 'There is a true and sincere friendship between you both.' You both? Who ever heard of a fortune cookie that addresses more than one person? When my mom opened hers, it was empty. Sometimes something spooky has to happen to make you notice what’s good in your life.

What’s good is my friendship with my mother, and something more. A greater good has come of the loss of my cool downtown existence. When I traded in my independence for a little bit of comfort, what I got in return turned out to be worth a lot more. These days I very closely resemble the person I’m supposed to be, and that’s a homecoming many people never get. Wherever I go from here, I’ll be at home with myself.

From Here (#5), a zine presenting essays about people and places (www .heremagazine.com). It was nominated for an Utne Reader Alternative Press Award in 2000 for best new title. Subscriptions: $10/4 issues from Box 310281, Red Hook Station, Brooklyn, NY 11231.

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