At supper the other day, Megan put down her fork and announced, “I think our family is the best it’s ever been right now.” We looked at her quizzically. She gestured around the table at the six of us. “I mean, the happiest.”
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but she was right. Despite the arguments that come from too many adults with too many opinions sharing one space, we are a happy household. And, ironically, I think that’s because we have spent so many years under one roof, we’ve had the luxury of extra time to understand and value each other.
I left home at 18 and hardly returned for 10 years. I was so busy building a career and having fun in a different city that I almost lost touch with my mother. It wasn’t until I had the twins that I began to spend time with Mum, and got to know her all over again, sharing experiences and conversations as one adult to another. My mother is dead now, and I sometimes look back on my selfish twenty-something years and regret that I didn’t let her into my life then, or bother to ask her about hers. But I was doing what society deems necessary: severing bonds and learning to fly alone.
Just because tradition says things have always been done a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s right or even possible to continue doing it like that. Having our adult children at home means that Ed and I are sharing their lives, witnessing their development as people. We’re friends. We talk about everything. And I think that Megan is right, our close family relationship is worth celebrating.
Ed is the three older children’s step-father, and in the early years of our relationship, things were not always easy. The kids were resentful and angry with their change of circumstances and the imposition of a new father figure in their lives. Apparently, half of all second relationships fail because of the children, and I can believe that.
But as the kids have become older and wiser, they have grown not just to love Ed, but to appreciate him. And this has taken time. Time that we have been lucky enough to have, because the kids didn’t leave at 18 without a glance over their shoulders.
The financial strain of feeding and housing six adults has meant we have had to do without certain luxuries, but I’m glad we let the children stay on in their bedrooms, because we have given them the freedom to pursue further education and enabled them to save money for their next step – out into the world.
Grandparents sometimes live with their middle-aged children for practical and financial reasons. But Ed and I don’t have any parents left. As he points out, having our grownup children come to live with us means we have created an upside-down extended family. These tend to be more the norm in Mediterranean countries; in England, we seem to prefer small family units. It’s part of our culture to put elderly relations into care homes and encourage children to move out as soon as they have finished education. But there is so much joy in living in a large group. Everyone is supported. No one has to struggle alone.
As young adults, the children all share some of the responsibility of cooking, cleaning, emptying bins and ironing. We know they will never shoulder the responsibility of utility bills or pay their share of the food, because when they can afford to do that, they can afford to move out.
Meanwhile, we all eat together once a day, and that is the time to talk about anything important, or just chat about our days. We don’t have to fit all that information into occasional phone calls or big family events. Each individual’s daily details are part of the fabric of our joint consciousness. And in the end, I think it’s the tiny things that are important, the things that can be forgotten if they are not shared immediately, but that keep you up to date with who that person is, and how they really are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s perfect. We’re not the Waltons. There are frustrations and worries. But funnily enough, most evenings the house is full of various shouted goodnights ringing up and down the stairs.
Some names have been changed
