Volume 25 · Number 3 · Spring 2008
Parents
Whose Room Is It, Anyway?
Spare room or shrine? Just what do you do with that empty bedroom when your child leaves home?
One day, hopefully before they turn 43, children leave home.
The giant sucking noise you hear immediately following their departure is the sound of the remaining household occupants filling the vacuum. Because no matter how much stuff students cart off to college — bedding, clothing, computer, bicycle, cell phone, Guitar Hero III controller — they have to leave their living space behind. And nature abhors an empty bedroom.
For many years, children occupy space in the household, whether they have a room to themselves or whether they share with siblings. When they’re little, their rooms provide a place for them to cut holes in their sheets in secret, as well as a place to be sent for time-outs when parents discover they’ve been secretly cutting holes in their sheets. Once kids reach their teenage years, their bedroom becomes a sanctuary from the intrusions of loving family members, a retreat with a door that can be slammed dramatically after striding out of the kitchen and yelling, “You’re ruining my life!” Teenagers use their rooms to cogitate and to vegetate, a place where they can focus on the tough business of growing up.
Given all the time they spend emoting in one place, it’s not surprising that, when adolescents leave home, they often feel possessive of the space they leave behind. Some parents, on the other hand, might be ready to expand their empire. Maybe you’re a parent with a really tiny kitchen, and you’d like to store a few seldom-used appliances in your daughter’s bedroom. Would it be so bad if she has to share her space over college breaks with a waffle iron and a deep fat fryer? Or maybe you’re a parent who feels less like an empty-nester and more like someone who’s recently had the bamboo shoots extracted from underneath your fingernails. (Phew, what a relief!) Maybe you’ve been looking forward to making some big changes around the house.
Well OK, but keep in mind that experts advise against undertaking expensive remodels as soon as kids depart because, honestly, do you have any idea how much college costs these days? Plus, dramatic changes at home can feel jarring when kids return to visit. And despite their liberal reputation, college students are downright reactionary when it comes to household alterations. They don’t want you to change anything: not their room, not the sofa, not even your brand of laundry detergent. My husband still remembers how indignant he felt when his father decided to remove the basketball hoop from the family driveway. I remember, too, because at the time, we were married with children and living 3,000 miles away from his childhood home. He still grumbles about it.
Other parents are reluctant to make even small alterations at home when a child departs, as though keeping things the same could somehow prevent the family constellation from changing. One family I know has a daughter in her senior year of college who returns home only for brief visits. During her adolescent years, she arranged the furniture in her room according to the principles of feng shui, which is Chinese for “buzz off.” She placed the bed under the window, pinned a dead bouquet of prom roses upside down on one wall and hung a crystal in the doorway to redirect parental energy away from the bedroom. Four years later, her mother accidentally bangs her head on the crystal every time she enters her daughter’s room to pick up the dead rose petals as they drop to the carpet. Which raises the question: Once parents are paying a bundle for kids to grow independent at college, how long before they decide that they haven’t lost a daughter, they’ve gained a guest room?
Rather than hanging a crystal in the doorway, our teenage son used shocking squalor to direct parental energy away from his bedroom. It was pretty effective. When he lived at home, his room was an unbelievable mélange of sweaty clothing, piles of papers, scattered books, wet Speedos, funky towels, crumpled water bottles and balls: tennis balls, exercise balls, water polo balls, basketballs, Nerf balls and beach balls.
As the time approached for our son to leave home, I realized that his reliance on housekeeping chaos to delineate himself from mom and dad had been wildly successful. I couldn’t believe I had given birth to someone who discovered a moldy, water-damaged copy of Hamlet in his room on the carpet and tossed the book right back where he found it because . . . um . . . because he had already taken his English final? I decided that his individuality would not be stifled by a tidy room at home while he was away at college, and I insisted on a deep cleaning effort before his departure.
Robin DeRieux (Photo: Sue Peri ’79)
What followed wasn’t pretty. My son was ready to quit when he hit the permafrost, but I insisted that he dig deeper, that he delve into dresser drawers, no matter what the danger. Among the gems he extracted were several unopened 20-ounce Coke bottles, imploded from years of storage, and $50 cash in a crumpled green Christmas envelope that he tossed directly into the garbage until I pointed out the profit in taking more pride in his work. The evening before he left for college, we were both unhappy with the results, which is always the hallmark of a good compromise.
Yet three weeks after our kid departed for freshman year, his bed was just like he left it — rumpled and unmade. This allowed me to entertain the fantasy that at any moment he might burst through the door, inquire about dinner, and dump his wet towel and swim goggles on the floor. Our second son pointed this out. He has generous plans to donate his big brother’s room to a foreign exchange student who will live with us for a month, and how would it look if Mom were still stuck in the denial phase of her grieving process?
And so, reluctantly, I washed the sheets and made the bed. This allowed me to feel simultaneously nostalgic and irritated, a familiar emotional state for parents of adolescents. Just before the holidays, when it was time for our freshman to return for his first visit, I mentioned my tidying efforts to him on the phone. He protested. “You made my bed? Now it won’t even look like my room!”
Not to worry. A day after he got home, it did.
Robin DeRieux can be reached at rdderieux@yahoo.com.