A Tourist in My Son’s New Home

The worst was yet to come. Departures for college turned out to be nothing compared with departures from college. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that my sons would eventually find their own homes. I had never tuned in to the dismayed chorus of psychologists, amplified in the news media, sounding off about a generation of kids moving back in with their parents after college. So what? Mine were welcome to boomerang back into their beds whenever they wanted. I even urged them to consider it. They didn’t.

I thought I had made my peace with having my sons move out, until I suddenly realized they were moving so far away that I would have to travel to see them. And I don’t mean across town. I would have to pack a suitcase, get on a plane, the whole nine yards. When I became a houseguest in my younger son’s home, the reality of our new lives was made blindingly clear. I understood that the journey had taken me across an entirely new parental frontier.

There is a moment of truth all parents must face, usually on a sofa bed. Children eventually make their own lives, entirely separate from ours, and we participate in them only by invitation. It is a wise mother, indeed, who remembers the lessons that once came out of her mouth about how to be a good houseguest.

This story is about Theo, my younger son. My older son, Alex, who I am sure cannot wait to host me in his own home, will have to get his own home first. He is renting a room in an apartment for a year in San Francisco. His brother, Theo, entered a graduate program in Colorado to study contemplative psychotherapy, which is a very useful pursuit to put into practice when a mother visits. (As, of course, I had to point out. Eye roll, please.)

Theo moved into his first apartment in a town I had never seen. Naturally, once he moved there, I was seized with a burning desire to visit Boulder, which does, after all, have mythical status to anyone (like me) who ever lived in or near the state of Hippie. As soon as Theo was done drilling the last screw into his furniture, I booked a flight.

Yes. He was screwing his furniture together. Theo had decided to make his own tables, beds, chairs, bookcases and stools.

The first photograph I got from Boulder was of Theo at Home Depot, his shopping cart bristling with sticks of lumber. He had designed each piece of furniture, sketched it out, measured how much lumber he would need, and had it cut at the store. I may have snorted. I was quite sure that lumber would become a giant pile of pickup sticks.

When photograph No. 2 arrived, I found myself peering, dumbfounded, at a full suite of furniture, designed and built by Theo in the U.S.A. It was modernist, with clean, simple lines; it had its own Donald Judd meets Home Depot sort of vibe. I sighed with pride, gazing at the photograph.

And then I became truly alarmed at this display of committed nesting.

That was when I booked my flight to Boulder, a city I really had to see.

When I got there I was overjoyed to see Theo; it had been an entire month since he had been home. “Not really, Mom,” he said, laconically. “This is my home. I’ve been here a few weeks.”

Well. I dropped my bag in the apartment — and believe me, deciding to stay with Theo, rather than book a hotel room, involved many hours of existential angst. He gave me the full tour. It took a minute or two. But the furniture! It was stunningly, mind-bogglingly beautiful. I checked for wobble, examined the joints. There was nothing to criticize. I immediately placed an order for a card table.

Then we set out to explore Theo’s Boulder, a charming, eccentric city of teahouses, yogurt bars and bookstores. We started at the Boom Yogurt Bar, a beautiful new place that also employs my son.