Loco Parentis: Hes Gotta Have It
That kind of money makes me look at my son a little differently. To me, he’s still Slob-Child, the boy who abandons dirty socks all over my house, forgets to flush the toilet, leaves trails of potato-chip crumbs between the kitchen and his computer. But to an increasing circle of people in the wide world, he’s someone you call “Sir” when he tells you to lace up your cleats.
ONCE IN A while, I get tired of doing all the things a mom does, day after day after day. I’ve always been able to cajole (read: guilt) Marcy into vacuuming the living room or sweeping the porch. Guilt never worked with Jake, but that was okay, because I had an ace in the hole: I could pay him to do chores. I’d slip him $3 to mow the lawn or walk the dog when I didn’t have time.
Once he started reffing, though, I lost my leverage. I can’t pay him enough to make it worth his while to wash the car. “How much?” he’ll ask when I offer recompense for some duty, and when I tell him, he’ll muse on it and then say, “Nah.” He doesn’t say it in a mean way. He’s simply weighing the effort against the profit, coldly, practically, unaffected by any emotional pull, like Mom could sure use my help here. He’s become the perfect junior capitalist.
Marcy’s jobs, with their small-scale earnings, have never been a threat to my sense of parental control. If she needs anything substantial — new winter coat, Spring Break trip to Daytona Beach — she has to come to me. Has to go through me, rather — has to listen to me give my opinion (a down coat is warmest; Daytona Beach is tacky). She’s still, at 19, willing to do that. I think she always will be. I can see us, when she’s 30 and I’m 62, amiably shopping together for her wedding dress. (Of course, I’ll pay.)
Jake, though, has always been less prone to buckle under the thumb of authority — mine, or anyone else’s. He goes out and makes more money than his sister does because he needs more money. Money equals autonomy. And it’s not a male/female thing. Marcy has girlfriends who have toiled for years in fast-food restaurants, working up to managerial status while barely out of high school. Desperate to be free of the emotional baggage of their home lives, they buy their way clean.
Jake was smart to nix that custodial account. He foresaw that it would only be the cause of more battles — and we battle enough as it is. At their heart, all our fights are about control: I want him to do things my way, and he insists on doing them his.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Just when I should be letting out the leash, I can’t help pulling it tighter. I’m like Nixon in ’72, or Hitler as the Red Army marched into Berlin. I can see the end, but the inevitability only makes me do stupid things, like bitch about the way Jake makes his bed. (Hey, yo: He makes his bed!) He’s six-foot-three. His voice is deeper than James Earl Jones’s. He has $300 in his pocket. He’s not a boy anymore.
I know the arguments between us are inevitable, part of the process of separation. I even grasp that their violence is testament to the sway I have over him. He’s fighting his way clear of me, and is willing to spend his weekends running in the hot sun to do so. None of this makes it easier to let go.
Because once he’s gone, what I’ve been for the past 20 years — Mom — will no longer be front and center in my life. And I’m pretty sure already I’d gladly pay anything to have that back.
E-mail: hingston@phillymag.com.
