My mother?! Are you mad?! It bugs me that she and I live in the same state.
But I've been living with the Grandmother for nearly fifteen years. At first it was an arrangement for my benefit, she was taking care of me while I got back on my feet and did college. And she still does take care of me to a great extent, especially these last two years when my employment was so spotty. But over the years I've learned to give back, and we've developed into a sort of mutual-aid society.
She washes the dishes, I run the errands; she nags me into eating properly, I wrestle with ordering her prescriptions over the phone; she pays for the groceries, I reach things down from the high cupboards; she loans me money when I'm short, and I drive her anywhere she wants to go and accompany her to the various hell-holes around the country where her relatives live; she gives me room and board, I take her to church (gack), not just driving her there but actually accompanying her inside. I help pick out her clothes, fix her hair, get her watch on and off, execute the many labor-intensive preparations for Christmas, and other little things, and she accepts my sexuality even though her religion teaches her it's sinful. And when she becomes incapacitated, as she most probably will (all of her sisters were completely senile before they died), I will be here taking care of her the way she took care of me.
But you know, living at home well into adulthood has a lot to do with the way you were raised. Few of the males in my family have the tiniest idea how to take care of themselves, they didn't go anywhere until they were married; most of the females are out of the nest the minute they turn eighteen. A lot of my friends from high-school, however, were literally booted out of the house when they went to college, the sheets weren't cold before their parents were converting their bedrooms into studies and sewing rooms; but those parents had instilled in their children the knowledge and independence they needed to survive on their own.
I've never had that... in the five years I did live away from home, I was a wreck. Paying bills, buying food, cleaning an apartment... it was all too much. I remember the shock of having to buy my own toilet-paper (you mean it doesn't magically appear in the linen closet?) and being surprised at how much it cost.
Someday when Grandmother's gone, I will have to make it on my own. Hopefully in the last fifteen years I've learned a little more about taking care of myself. Some of us are just late-bloomers, is all.
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