Martine Fougeron took that photo, back in the day.
And the other day, on September 21, the Wordstock blog (scroll down on the Wordstock blog, to Sept 21, if you click and go there) ran a piece by me on the Ethics of Family.
It's not the simplest, easiest piece, not fluff or bubble gum or cotton candy. And it's a blog, with some typos and mistaken words.
It is about the limits of family, something we want... we tend... to think of as limitless. My friend Tom Mullen wondered if we mature out of unconditional love - do we mature into conditions of love between mature people? - or people you want and expect to be 'mature'? And if not "love", then "support" ? ? but that's leading the reader...
Cutting and pasting:
wordstock festival
News from the Pacific Northwest's largest book festival
Essay: Michael Rosen
Michael Rosen appears Saturday, October 10th at 11 A.M. on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage.
I'm drowning in an ethics of family. Okay, not quite. I am claustrophobic, disappointed, sometimes angry, perhaps too often prideful these days with some of our sons.
We've raised an extended family of seven boys, starting by adopting our sons Ripton then Morgan. Each was named for a Vermont town, the state where I grew up.
My wife and I live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an urban place with the feel of community. Our sons' names may come from my pastoral yearning. Robert Frost, Vermont's state poet and sage, lived and wrote in the village of Ripton. I named my recent book about our extended family (What Else But Home: Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse) from his The Death of the Hired Man. Perhaps from your schooling, the hired hand Silas has returned to the couple's home whose farm he's worked, abandoned, worked, abandoned. "Off he goes always when I need him most," Warren the husband complains to his wife Mary. He'll not have Silas back.
Mary answers about work, then Warren about home, then Frost writes a coupley back and forth in his poetry of place, Mary leading:
"You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time."
"Home," he mocked gently.
"Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail."
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
"I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."
In the summer of 1998, when Ripton was seven, he walked us away from the jungle gyms he'd grown up on in the park across the street from our apartment, onto a blacktop baseball field. Where he joined a sandlot game we'd seen for years. Ripton was the only White kid there. He was assigned right field and afterwards invited teammates home for video games and dinner. Handfuls of boys came.
We took Ripton and Morgan to the baseball field the next day and thereafter, and neighborhood boys kept visiting our home. Five boys from the game--Black, Dominican, Puerto Rican, from public or other subsidized housing, motherfull and fatherless homes (their fathers dead from murder, from prison and drugs, others moved on encouraged by alcoholism, or uninvolved save for fertilization, or involved till involved with another woman then another, maternal and paternal half siblings spread through households)--eventually moved in and became our extended family. Each came into our home during a crisis in his life, most often about finishing high school, sometimes frozen and needing a push towards college.
Early after we'd met our five "bigger boys"--Kindu, Carlos, William, Philippe and Juan are four and five years older than Ripton--a friend lectured that Leslie and I had to grow an unconditional parenting relationship with them. They needed to be welcome always, this years before any of them moved in. The boys would test us, my friend said, conditioned to an initial attention from middle class, mostly white adults, followed by abandonment. I thought my friend formulaic. And, he added, we were in a life or death struggle for their live. I thought him dramatic then. A decade later, I know he was accurate all around.
Leslie and I agreed to act unconditionally. We found ways even as the bigger boys ignored our house rules. The arguments we'd have afterwards with them terribly tried our commitment. We found ways to act unconditionally through the disappearance of Ripton's sneakers, of his jeans and tees as he grew to the same size as the bigger boys. Ripton's and Morgan's Walkmen then iPods disappeared as each technology held sway. Then far too much money was stolen from Leslie's wallet. These incidents and the issues we dealt with regarding all seven boys growing up together are painted in What Else but Home.
This autumn marks four and a half years since the story of my book ended. Six of our sons are in college, the five bigger boys and now Ripton, who attends Elon University in North Carolina. Kindu lives again at home and is one year from a BA at Farmingdale State College , a daily train ride away. We rent a room for Carlos near Queens College, where we hope he is a couple years from graduating. Juan, Philippe and William are all back at Borough of Manhattan Community College, BMCC, starting and restarting their educations. They were taking remedial courses this summer. They'd previously dropped out of various colleges for various reasons. In the case of two, it was to join the Navy, then they dropped out of that. One dropped out to come home to a pregnant girlfriend, though we argued that earning a college degree would best enable him to be a provider. Another seemingly dropped out to come closer to a missed girlfriend. Sometimes they failed out.
Each has held jobs, save one. That boy did for the shortest time, when I helped him towards a retailing position in high school--but he was let go, apparently for a lack of effort. Two of the boys now rely on unemployment insurance, though my wife and I have moral qualms with their accepting welfare payments at young and healthy ages. The "bigger boy" who doesn't work, now a young man, has money. Neighborhood intimations hint at not legal earnings. And we don't know.
Leslie administers of our support for the bigger boys--an awkward word though appropriate. This semester, after helping them register for the proper courses at workable times, paying for tuition for most of them and overpriced textbooks for all, it came time for Metro Cards, for riding our public transportation system of busses and subways. Each of the three attending BMCC wanted monthly Metro Cards, enabling them an unlimited number of rides. Leslie, sitting with each individually, tried to calculate how many times that son went to BMCC each week, to price the cost of individual trips against the cost of an unlimited ride ticket. I didn't participate. I hadn't spoken with Leslie about her thoughts towards funding transportation. Two of our sons endured my wife's questions. One stormed out. He sent an email to Leslie and me the next day:
Dear Mike and Leslie,
Yesterday Leslie and I had a disagreement. She wanted to control everywhere i moved around this city with the counting of my off days and school days. I don't believe that idea came from her. I know its a privilege to have you guys paying for our school and transportation but this year you guys dint pay for my school. You got a me scholarship and the other half i applied for financial aid and received it which this is my last time because i cant receive it after the age of 24. You guys told me to follow my dreams. I joined the business enterprise club and the dominican club at school. Now my problem is if i get invited to go to a museum etc. i have to rethink it because i cant go cause my transportation is very limited. I asked leslie if this is because of money problems and she said its not any of my business. So i'm going by what i see. Luxury cars and school don't mix. Im not asking for a Luxury car, i'm asking for a metrocard. If you guys cant provide then let me know because i have no means of transportation and i will drop my classes at least with a 75% refund. By the way i only have 1 book for 5 classes because i'm wondering what leslie would make me do for the other 4. I really don't want an educated comeback because thats what you guys are good at and i am very simple. all I want is a yes or no. Thank you (Name)
BMCC, from where the angry boy lives now again in his mother's apartment, is 2.2 miles, a forty six minute walk according to Google maps, twenty nine minutes by public transportation, which does not include waiting time. It's perhaps ten minutes by bike. The boys know I'd buy them bikes, but only Morgan has decided to pedal our flat city. And youthful legs do remain a means of transportation.
I was upset by our son's personal accusation of parsimony, what seemed vitriolic. More, I'd arranged the scholarship he'd written about. Leslie and I were paying for textbooks. We'd supported him for years. We'd earned livings to afford whatever cars he was taunting us with. Accusing Leslie of trying to control his movements around the city was a powerful stance. He knew, without much doubt, that Leslie and I weren't having "money problems" sufficient to effect his access to public transportation. Threatening to drop his college courses, twenty-three years old after finally returning to an education, was a threat to hurt us by hurting himself. Which Leslie and I believe he is capable of.
I wrote back, rebuking his accusations.
He wrote back with more incendiary accusations - demanding our money to support him on his terms.
Our back and forth was taking place when the opportunity for this blog arose, while I was thinking, At what point is home no longer "something you somehow haven't to deserve," no longer "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Without elegance, at what point is enough finally enough?
But that line isn't sufficiently rigorous. The poetry of "take you in" and "someplace you haven't to deserve" aren't exactly unconditional love, what parenting dialogues consider appropriate for parents in building healthy self-esteem in young children. But at what time does a roof come with serious conditions? As Tom Mullen remarked (quoting to quote a friend here), does a child "mature out of unconditional love?"--into young adulthood. A young child can't comprehend complex consequences of action, while a responsibility of parenting, as it goes along, is to encourage such comprehension. And increasingly to hold one's children accountable.
At what point does caring for become enabling, not in the best interests of one's child? "Best interests," "objective interests", these are terribly slippery concepts. And from "best interests" to "harmful" is a simple progression assuming only timing and chance - smoking can lead to cancer, drug dealing can lead to prison and the harshly delimited life of an ex-convict.
Leslie say's our responsibility with this son is to reestablish our role as the financial and advice providers and for him to return to providing parental respect. I'm not so sure. I have brittle faith he can offer such respect. Each time Leslie says so, I think of the Fifth of the Ten Commandments, which precedes the bans on murder, adultery, theft, bearing false witness and desiring your neighbors wife: "Honor your father and mother." I'm not learned in Jewish law to know its nuance, the subtleties of honoring and dishonoring, and the consequences. Nor is ours only a Jewish home; five of our seven boys aren't Jews. Nor am I strictly this son's father.
I feel claustrophobic, drowning when I don't know the way forward. I want, still need, to take care of our seven sons. And with this young man, with some of the others, I no longer know how. Parenting feels like herding wild flowers. And I don't know the boundaries of family, let alone its ethics.
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