Moving In with the Parents at Age 50

I’ve pondered a long time about how to write this post. Being a fiftysomething whose family is moving in with the in-laws is never an easy thing to disclose. But after times of feeling despair and times of feeling euphoria, I’ve come to view the decision in five words: it is what it is.

There are many reasons to look forward to the move to Dodge Center in southeastern Minnesota.

• My husband Mike and I will have more job possibilities, as Dodge County has an unemployment rate of 5.5% compared to Pine County's rate of 8.9%. (Minnesota readers, see how your county rates in this cool map.) 
• Our son Wyatt will have a shorter bus ride to a school that offers more academic and athletic choices than his last one.
• Mike will be able to hang out with friends he’s had for decades.
• Wyatt will be able to see his grandparents more often than twice a year. 
• Shopping will no longer take up the entire day. 
• There's a free vanilla softserve with our dog Jerry's name on it. 

An Emerging Demographic Trend
This boomer boomerang trend is happening to more families than ours. Don’t ask me for statistics; moving back in with the parents at age 50 is something you don’t put in status updates or announce to your network. (Blabby bloggers excepted.) Heck, 25-year-olds get the fisheye if they say they’re moving back in with Mom and Dad.

So I say, let’s embrace this demographic trend. We are FIBBERs, or Fiftysomething Boomerang Boomers. Marketers are missing a prime opportunity here.

The Waltons to the Rescue

I became at peace with the move after watching an episode of The Waltons, a 1970s drama about a Depression-era family in Appalachian Virginia. In an episode entitled “The Heritage,” a land developer offered to buy the Waltons’ property because of the mineral springs on their land. After much thought, patriarch John was ready to sell. Then eldest son John-Boy observed that the decision to sell should be made by the two youngest children, Jim-Bob and Elizabeth. The five older children would take with them years of memories -- footfalls on the stairs, sounds and smells of breakfast, chattering voices around the kitchen table -- but the youngest would scarcely remember this heritage.

That’s when I realized that three generations living under one roof doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

I don’t have delusions about the move. Life won't always be peach cobbler and homemade ice cream. No professional likes to admit to needing help paying bills, and no older parent likes to admit to needing help around the house. But it's that mutual need, that exchange of value, a willingness to work together, and an unbending love of family that trumps stiff-necked pride, that will pull us through.

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Jerry's Kids

It's been a busy 24 hours, dogwise, at our house.

First, Mike found three abandoned puppies on the road near some deserted vacation property. Two scrawny little boys and one zaftig little girl. We're keeping them in an empty 50-gallon fish tank until we find them homes.

I placed one of the males down by Jerry, ready to snatch up the pup if the Weimaraner became hostile. Instead he went into Mrs. Dogfire mode, tending to the little guy. Intending to take some photos, I took Jerry out for a quick walk first. But the first porcupine of the spring cancelled the photo shoot.

Now that Jerry is home from the vet, freshly de-quilled, I finally had a chance to take photos.

One of the little boys has found a friend in Jerry. 

Don't Make That Call!

I'm still thinking about an article that came my way last week via Jason Barnett. Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You talks about how in the past five years, adults have given up on the telephone: land line, voice mail, and mobile. It was eye-opening because it took me so long to get comfortable making cold calls to potential employers. Only to read that phone calls are not welcomed

I totally understand. I can be working feverishly on deadline at home. When the phone rings, my mind jolts to a halt like an emergency brake stopping a freight train. If the person calling is working at the same frenzied pace as I am, the conversation sounds like one of the old Joe Sedelmaier TV commercials for Federal Express.

It's unfortunate because the telephone was designed to establish a connection—which is what we all want in our communications. Both my mother and my husband’s mother were telephone operators, my mom in 1940s Detroit, Mike’s mom in rural southeastern Minnesota. One operator routed calls with romantic-sounding telephone exchanges, the other fielded calls on party lines. As a kid in the 1960s I remember owning a poster called The Telephone Story. I imagined owning a Princess phone or a trimline phone or one of those new touchtone phones. I’d choose aqua. Compared to our own phone—a standard-issue, beige desktop job with a rotary dial—they were jet-age and snazzy. 

When I call someone today, I email them and ask if we can set up a phone appointment. It’s premeditated but necessary. Today's employees have taken on an increased workload because of a reduced workforce, while employers test the winds to determine if they should staff up.

In college I bought an aqua touchtone phone for my efficiency apartment. And now that I have a Princess phone?  It's been deemed a pink purveyor of punishment.

So I use it as a desk accessory. And a reminder to watch out for jet lag in this jet age.

Do you fondly remember a particular phone? A Mickey Mouse phone? A red lips phone? Your first smart phone? Talk about it here. It's your dime.

The Telephone Story Image is courtesy of Coen Meeder and appears on www.porticus.org. ©1894-2011 Beatrice Companies, Inc. 


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Lessons in trust from Molly the Goat

Since I no longer have a three-hour roundtrip commute, the farm animals who I rarely saw before have come to know me. I recently wrote about the Maricle of Birth Center, If you'll notice in the main photo, you'll see two newborn baby goats, or kids. But the mother, Baby Girl, still has a swollen belly. That's because she was carrying four kids. One and two kids are the norm, three happens occasionally, four is extremely rare. The two still inside her, the largest and the smallest of the four, were stillborn. The two newborns, who arrived shortly before a St. Patrick's Day, we named Fibber and Molly.
Molly won't win any prizes at the State Fair. When she was born, her jaw jutted out and her nose was pushed in, undoubtedly because of the cramped quarters inside her mother for the five-month gestation period. Molly was unable to nurse for the first few days, so my husband Mike and I fed her milk replacer from an eye dropper. While her brother Fibber was a hardy little billy, we gave Molly 50/50 odds of surviving. But survive she did, a small and skittish animal. As you can see by her horns, a fragile animal too. Her imperfections are what endeared her to us.
Molly was born four years ago. It was only this summer that she allowed me to pet her. When she sees me she no longer bolts, although her ears stand straight up to signal her caution. I hold out my index finger and slowly she comes forward, lowering her head so I can stroke the white rosette on her forehead. Sometimes she even lets me run my hand along her side. The act still makes me marvel.
Trust doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and patience. It doesn't matter if the relationship is with another person or a barnyard animal. One of the things I value most is when someone tells me, with words or without, "I trust you." It's what I strive for in all of my relationships.

Men are from Mars, USB ports are from Mayberry

For me, the most challenging part about starting my own shop is doing my own IT. I know enough about it to know I don't want to do it.

At 13, my son Wyatt is becoming a reliable resource. I’m also lucky to live near a shop that not only offers reasonably priced computer service, they know Macs. I even recommend it to my friends in the Cities, should they be in the mood for a leisurely drive.

Then there’s my husband Mike, who has become a reluctant IT person. The relationship makes for interesting exchanges, considering the doubled potential for Mars/Venus issues between spouse/spouse and IT person/computer user. The latest scenario involved hooking up my cordless mouse to my Macbook Pro.

“How would I go about hooking this up?,” I asked, the metamessage being, “How would I get you to hook it up?”

“You can do this,” he encouraged. He picked up the receiver in one hand and the mouse in the other. “This is the transmitter. This is the receiver."

Thinking of the Ten Things that Drive Users Crazy, I groused, “Why don’t you just say ‘This is Mr. Receiver’?”

Mike tried another tack. Holding up the tiny piece of metal, he explained,  “The receiver is Sara and the USB port is the Mayberry Phone Company. The mouse is Sheriff Taylor and he wants to call Aunt Bee, who is in the computer.”

Okay. That I got. I even grinned.

If communication is simple but not simplistic, relatable yet respectful, and leaves both speaker and listener in good spirits, it's done the job.