Free Mother Daughter Me by Katie Hafner Page B

situation
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    —Margaret Mead, in an interview
    I N THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, TWO OUT OF EVERY three Americans lived on farms, and the vast majority of those households contained multiple generations. That made sense, given the continuity of the farming life, the seamless passing of land to the next generation.
    Until World War II, roughly one in four American households contained multiple generations. Over the years, as the number of family farms dwindled, so, too, did intergenerational living. With no farm to inherit, there was little reason for adult children to live at home. Some sociologists argue that even when such living arrangements were commonplace, they weren’t what people really wanted. Financial hardship was the determining factor. In the 1950s, as the nation recovered from the privations of the Depression and World War II, Americans began to associate nuclear households with affluence. Added to this was a strong societal emphasis on “maturity” and the desire for young couples whowere starting families to strike out on their own. Accordingly, the multigenerational American household fell out of favor. At the end of the twentieth century, fewer than 15 percent of people age sixty-five and older lived with their adult children.
    While contemporary survey-takers have found that a majority of baby boomers consider it their responsibility to take in an elderly parent who needs help, few actually do it. And when they do, it’s usually because of the elderly parent’s financial duress. Never has a social scientist cited cockeyed optimism as the motivating factor. This makes my mother and me statistical freaks. So surprised are people when we tell them what we’re doing that I’m beginning to guess that for every ten thousand households of combined generations, only one is a threesome of white middle-class females carrying out a misguided experiment.
    This is because most people know better than to try what we’re trying. They know—as Lia warned—that everything can turn into a tug-of-war, that battlefields can be as small as a utensil drawer, plump with meaning. They know that after a while you start to hate yourself, as you see yourself revert to age six, or ten. These are the same realistic and sensible people who say, “I’m fine visiting my mother or having her visit me. But forty-eight hours is the most I can stand.”
    Sure enough, as quickly as my mother appeared in our daily lives, that’s how fast things have begun to unravel.
Really
unravel. Zoë, who only two months earlier cleaned the apartment and greeted her grandmother with flowers, has begun to keep a wary distance from her, which, of course, hurts my mother’s feelings. But Zoë is hurt too. She thought she’d have a warm, fulfilling relationship with her grandmother and was unprepared for my mother’s hastiness to judge, her circumlocutions, her tone deafness around kids. And, having heard nothing but carefully worded encouragement for years, Zoë was particularly unprepared to have her cello-playing criticized by my mother.
    Zoë has now stopped practicing her instrument altogether. It lies in its case in a corner of the living room. She doesn’t give it a second look. She stays in her room most of the time, on her computer. I hope it’s schoolwork, but I suspect it’s Facebook. As for me, I haven’t done any actual work, the kind that brings in money, for the past few weeks. I’ve taken on a fascinating assignment researching and editing a book for awell-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He pays me by the hour, and if I don’t work, I don’t get paid.
    My mother makes careful note of every shared expense. If she pays for something we’ve agreed to split, such as a session with Lia, her request for reimbursement, which she sends to me via email, is made as soon as possible. My mother is appalled by how expensive everything is in San Francisco. In particular, her cleaning lady in San Diego charged nothing