Home Free

by Marni Jackson

  I am surprised to find that more and more I do have faith. Even though I’m anxious about the obstacles still ahead of him, I feel optimistic at heart. I am beginning to believe that his resistance to the more traditional routes is part of an ongoing canny, intuitive adaptation to a new world. (Perhaps it qualifies as “evolution.”) “It’s like I’m doing my own unofficial graduate program,” he says about his industrious, self-regulated days of multiple jobs, ambitious creative endeavours, and social networking. He’s paying his rent, and hanging onto his dreams, as he acquires the skills, knowledge, and values that will take him forward, in ways I cannot imagine.

  Just when our kids need forbearance, support, and maybe some benign neglect around the topic of careers, they’re more likely to encounter our fear that they will “lose their place” if they take too long figuring things out. But they don’t need more nervousness; my son looks over his shoulder too.

  The world is precarious. We want to see our kids on a foolproof, well-lit path. But that safe path no longer exists. It’s a wraparound frontier now.

  It was a family gathering a few days after the death of my mother, at the age of 99. Brian had put together a slide show with some old photographs of my mother’s life, from a startled, round-faced baby in 1911 to a college student in a black wool bathing suit doing headstands on a beach. Then a bride in a tailored suit and hat with one foot on the runner of a Model T Ford; a new mother in front of her house, slightly frowning; finally, a grandmother in a fuchsia shirt laughing and brandishing her sherry glass. I told the people gathered in my parents’ former living room a few stories about her. Then the grandsons spoke up.

  “She was always doing something, or making something, and I would do it with her,” said Daniel,who has become a gifted visual artist. “Whether it was painting, or cooking, or raking the garden. I learned alongside her.”

  My nephew Jake was partly raised by my parents for his first eight years, after his parents split up. Full of emotion, Jake simply said thank you to his grandmother for everything she’d done. Then Casey, the middle grandson, got up to say a few words.

  Our family tends not to dress up for special occasions, but he had ironed his good white shirt and put on his suit. He wore leather shoes, polished, and his hair was combed back, just like my father in his youth. It was a nod to the importance of family rituals and a tribute to my dapper dad.

  Standing in the middle of a room filled with friends and neighbours, he said that when he was little he took his grandparents and their benevolent, broadloomed realm for granted. He came for visits, ate the dinner especially prepared with his allergies and appetites in mind, then escaped the dinner table to eat his second dessert while watching cartoons in the den. He assumed that this cared-for world was just one corner of a bigger, similarly forgiving universe.

  “It took a while before I realized that they had created this world for us and that it didn’t just exist on its own.”

  There were a few nods around the room. I wondered if we were going to be able to give our grandchildren the same sense of a warm,coherent environment (with less beige broadloom) in which to thrive. That was what we ran away from. But our children who won’t leave home or the ones who come back are more grown up, in many ways, than us.

  Epilogue

  I AM AT HOME, in my office, surrounded by piles of book manuscript on the floor. The yellow Post-its that curl up from many of the pages represent edits still to be done. The deadline is close. Cunningly, I have shifted the focus of my anxiety from my grown son to this pile of paper. But my main worry is the title. I’ve come up with 26 of them, but none that pass muster with my publisher,my family, and me.

  If you try to think about titles for too long, you eventually lose all perspective. You start choosing random lines from songs by Beck, and they all sound brilliant.

  This has already happened to me by 2 p.m. when Brian comes into the room.

  “Any luck?” he asks.

  “How about I Really Must Be Going Now.”

  A tactful pause. “I think it’s a bit arch.”

  “But it’s funny. Isn’t it? They’re keen on funny.”

  “But the book’s not that funny,” he points out.

  “I know. It’s semi-tragic. People keep dying in it. I warned them not to expect Erma Bombeck.”

  I turn around and notice for the first time that his mouth looks strange, kind of rubbery, and that he’s pale. Then I remember; he has just had a root canal.

  “Oh, your mouth, right! How was it?”

  He shrugs, and his lips ripple experimentally before he speaks.

  “It was okay. And when they were giving me the nitrous oxide, I was sure I had come up with the perfect title for you.”

  “Really? On nitrous? What?” I was getting desperate. Maybe drugs really were the answer.

  His lips form a sort of square.

  “Consent. ”

  We laugh,which causes his mouth to do odd things.

  “Well, it’s a great title for book about date rape,” I say.

  “What’s wrong with the one from last night—How We Leave Home? Doesn’t anybody like that?”

  “Not really. Barbara said it might end up in the ‘How To’ section of the bookstore. And Janet thought I said ‘Howie Leaves Home.’ She thought it was a children’s book about a duck.”

  “Last night when I was walking by the lake, I came up with an idea for the subtitle. The Far Shore of Motherhood.”

  “Hmmm. Nice.”

  “Because there is a lake theme in the book . . .”

  “. . .which only you will notice . . .”

  Brian massages his jaw.

  “What about Sugar Mountain?” I say. “The Neil Young song? It’s actually a song about being 20 and leaving home.”

  His brow furrows.

  “I’m not sure mothers of small children would want to buy a book called Sugar Mountain . . . ,” he tentatively offers.

  “With the subtitle Feel The Rush! Okay, I see your point, forget it. Although, kids might buy it. They’d buy that and Howie Leaves Home for sure.”

  It’s after 2 p.m., and I’m still in my nightgown. I push some of the manuscript piles around with my bare feet, fanning them out.

  “I Really Must Be Going is still my favourite. It’s what someone says when they know they should be leaving, and then don’t. It’s the malingering mother, always threatening to go, but still sitting there with her coat on.”

  He peers at the long file of potential titles open on my screen. His white hair at the back of his head is all ruffled up from being in the dentist’s chair.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t lie down for a while?” I say.

  “No, I’ve got too much stuff to do.”

  “Well, don’t worry about me. I’ve got two more days. No need to panic.”

  Brian is someone who does the Sunday New York Times crossword until every box is filled. I see him mentally rolling up his sleeves.

  “What about Mothering Up—that’s upbeat. Or—wait—Mothering Down . . . or . . . Too Close to Home . . . or—”

  I swivel in my ergonomic chair and put my arms around him. It’s a strange assignment I have chosen, to come up with a working title for our lives, but I’m glad he’s still game.

  Acknowledgements

  The inklings of this project began with a preface I wrote for Double Lives, a literary anthology about motherhood and the writing life. I’d like to thank Shannon Cowan,Fiona Lam and Cathy Stonehouse for inviting me to contribute. The piece I wrote for them became a scene in this book and got me thinking about our relationship as parents to our grown-up children.

  However, it was my editor, Patrick Crean,who came to me with the idea, and I am grateful for his faith in the project. I’m sure we both thought it would be a simple undertaking. But becoming an embedded reporter in one’s own family has its disorienting moments. I counted on Patrick’s support, good judgement and encouragement at every step along the way.

 
The chapter “That’s That”has been adapted from the story “Just Cremation,”which appeared in the anthology The Heart Does Break, published by Random House. Part of the chapter entitled “The Broken Year” first appeared in an essay for Zoomer magazine. My sincere thanks to editors Jean Baird and Kim Izzo for their guidance.

  I did my best to be home-free while I worked on this book, by moving from nest to nest. I am grateful to Katherine Ashenberg, Anne Nicholson and Arne Moore, John Barrington and Tina Van-derheyden, and the Queen St. Dark Horse café for providing writing refuges.

  The chapter “Vertical Travel” is based on conversations with my godson, Gabriel Czarnecki, who generously shared his knowledge and ideas about rite of passage ceremonies. Mark Czarnecki helped me sort out the sixties. Thanks to Christy Mackintosh for her Tunnel Mountain research.

  My friend and colleague Nora Underwood turned the copyediting process into a pleasurable dialogue, and I am grateful for her deft editorial insights as well. My appreciation to Wendy Thomas at Thomas Allen Publishers for grace under pressure, and to my agent, Samantha Haywood, for her early endorsement. To Jill Frayne for always checking in. For manuscript reads I’m indebted to Ian Pearson,Brian Johnson,Casey Johnson,Christopher Keil and Barbara Gowdy. From the first outline-on-a-napkin to the final draft,Mike Kearns provided counsel. Many thanks to my comrades who escorted me through the title ordeal, in particular to Anne Mackenzie. Janet Burke provided perspective and ER support, as always.

  At this point, authors normally acknowledge their loved ones, without whom the book would not be possible, etc. In my case, this has never been truer. Let me thank my beloved narrative elements, Brian and Casey, from the bottom of my heart. I am lucky to have two big-spirited men in my life, and I owe everything to their creativity, honesty and generosity.