After My Divorce, I Moved Back In With My Parents — And I Relished Being Taken Care Of Like A Child Again. I was 48.
But when I started dating again and I borrowed my mom's mirror to check out some bump on my vagina, things at home got too close for comfort.
I'm sorry it has taken me this long to write to you today! I've been consumed by a story I want to run this week. I'll go ahead and tell you what it's about – it's the least I can do after giving you no new content for more than a day. Basically, I'm going back for the first time to my boarding school, Phillips Academy (Andover), the place where I had such a horrific experience that I came up with the idea for Sassy magazine, there in my lonely dorm room, to save other girls from my fate.
Not only have I not been back since, I have also most certainly never been to any high school reunion, which is what I'm doing next week. I'm going back with my mom, the person who dropped me off there all those years ago in her hippie spray painted car with her long-haired friends, thus providing me with an image of her driving away that’s been perfect fodder for every acting class or role for the rest of my life when I've ever needed to produce tears. Anyway, I know there are much bigger things in the world, and even bigger issues in my own world, but this event feels like a lot. And most of all, I need a lot of help from you all with how to handle it. But I will write you more about all of this in the next few days.
So thank you for your patience and if you weren't patient, I totally understand that. Let me know if you're mad in the comments and do enjoy this piece from the same writer who engagingly told us about deciding to get a divorce while watching the Barbie movie. This is kind of a “what happened after that” piece. I hope you find it interesting and want to talk about it with me.
In short: Not only do I love you guys, I need you too. And I appreciate you being here so so much.
Love, Jane
By Amanda Klarsfeld
After dropping my daughter off at her Boston boarding school to begin her junior year, I Ubered to South Station to catch an evening train to New York City. After Skylar’s freshman and sophomore dropoffs, I’d returned to my home in Florida. But I had decided to leave both Florida and my husband of 20 years behind for a new life. Well, in a way, it was my old life. I would be moving back in with my parents in Manhattan, where I’d grown up, until I figured out my next steps.
My parents greeted me at Penn Station at midnight. The train had been delayed and I had told them they didn’t need to. But my 79- and 80-year old mom and dad insisted. And I was glad they had. The hugs they both gave me when I stepped off of the train felt like a nutrient I hadn’t realized I was deficient in.
They say you can never go home again, but I beg to differ. My suitcase would soon be unpacked into the same drawers I used as a child and then squeezed, empty, into the closet alongside my old yearbooks, Dr. Suess books, Smurfs and vinyl collection, including a 7-inch single of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”
Ironically, my parents did understand, and that’s why I was moving back. “Come home,” they’d said. “Stay as long as you need.” Luckily, the Upper East Side rent-stabilized apartment they’d lived in since 1975 was the only place on earth I wanted to be. I’d come a long way from the girl who wrote “Fuck You” in Sharpie on her door at age 15.
Even though my dad had covered the hormone-charged graffiti (I don’t even remember what I’d been mad about) with several coats of lavender paint until it was no longer visible, the sentiment behind it would frequently rear its ugly head, culminating in my eventual decision to raise my own child over 1200 miles away from home. You hear about kids fleeing dysfunctional families, but you don’t hear much about those who flee functional ones – families with parents who genuinely love one another and have family dinners with their two daughters nightly, who offer stability and safety and unconditional acceptance. I needed to prove to myself that I could also have these things without their help or influence. I didn’t want to be a nepo-baby.
When I became a mother, living far away from them became harder and sadder. When friends would casually mention that they were going to dinner at their parents’ house on Sunday night, or dropping off their kids to be with their mom for the day, I’d vibrate with envy. But there was nothing I could do about it at the time. We were a Florida family.
Skylar loved visiting her grandparents in New York so we went frequently. The flight was so quick, it almost felt like teleportation. It was surreal toggling between the two worlds so easily, between my past and my present. I loved that Skylar could bathe in the same bathtub I used as a girl, that she could stand on the same step-stool I used when I helped my mom in the kitchen. I loved watching my daughter cozy up on the sofa with my dad and watch his favorite movie, “Auntie Mame,” the film my sister and I had watched with him a hundred times as kids.
But now, Skylar was away at school and I was once again the baby of East 68th Street. It’s exactly what I needed after playing the role of mother and wife for so many years. My parents did my laundry and cooked me dinner and I did not help.
It might sound like I was taking advantage of them, but I wasn’t. They said that it felt as good to them to take care of me as it felt for me to be taken care of.
I was also in love with the City, a place that welcomed me back after thirty years away, no questions asked. I called it my New-Yorgasm. The things people complain about – the honking, the crowds, the breath-stealing steam billowing from manholes – they all felt like a homecoming parade. I even loved the smell of the subway.
“Eventually, I downloaded the dating apps and started meeting men for drinks or dinner. My parents, notorious for their late bedtimes, would always be up when I got home to ask me questions.”
The apartment itself continued to act as an ongoing episode of “This Is Your Life.” My name – Amanda J. Zuckerman – remained stamped in ink three times on the wall of a hall closet, covered lightly by the paint my dad had used in an attempt to cover it. When I’d open the kitchen pantry door, it conjured up memories of my childhood cats who always came running in response to the sound, in anticipation of a meal. I’d open the piano bench to find the instructional books my sister and I used, decorated with motivational stickers from our teacher. Wow! Super! You’re a Star. I was in a permanent time warp.
My mom and I would have our coffee together each morning while my dad slept late. Soon after I moved in, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and his tremor kept him up deep into the night. While we held coffee mugs, we’d talk. Sometimes we’d discuss my dad and whether his condition was improving in response to medication. Other times, we spoke about my divorce, or my daughter, and how she was handling it.
Most mornings, the conversation stayed light. I remember discussing Tom, the doorman, the only one who had remained in the building since my childhood.
“It’s so weird,” I said. “When I was a kid, he was an adult. But now, he doesn’t seem all that much older than I am.”
“I agree,” she said. “But have you seen that paunch? He’s gained a lot of weight lately.”
These are the conversations I loved best, the kind you have when you know the other person is going to be there the next day and the next and the next – no pressure to talk about anything consequential. I wish that my Florida self, the woman who had silently mourned the loss of her natal family, could have looked into her future and seen a glimpse of my mom and me still in our pajamas, cell phones silenced from the previous night, mugs in hand.
I had time for these lazy mornings because I was jobless. I was hunting for one, but slowly, as my living expenses were taken care of. One day, of course, I would want to move out, but not yet. My parents were now my best friends. We went to Trader Joe’s together, shared the thrice weekly Hello Fresh meals – meant for two, but split into three portions. I joined them for theater and the ballet and out to dinner with their friends. We went to the gym together; my mom would pack three water bottles with ice, and three pieces of gum, in a cooler. We even went out for their anniversary, just the three of us! I would joke that we were a throuple, but I’ve since looked it up and it most definitely has a sexual connotation so no, we weren’t, Ew! But if there were such a thing as a platonic throuple, this was certainly it.
“‘I hope you hate it!’ my dad would say about my potential new apartment, whenever I’d leave for an appointment with a realtor.”
One day, my mom questioned me about how I thought things were going. “You used to get so irritated with me,” she said. This was not inaccurate. “Do you still find me annoying?” The answer was “no” and I told her so. But she continued to question me, asking me if anything at all she did was bothersome to me.
I didn’t want to start an argument, but I also have a frustrating addiction to honesty. “Well,” I replied. “It is kind of annoying when we're getting ready to go somewhere and you stop tying your shoes every time you start talking.”
She let it sink in.
“My turn,” I said. “What do I do that’s annoying?”
“I can’t think of anything,” she said, much too quickly.
“There has got to be something! We’ve lived together for three months.”
A minute passed. “My knives don’t go in the dishwasher,” she said.
I knew this, and I respected the rule. It must have been my dad who was putting them in the dishwasher, but this wasn’t time for passing the blame.
“I won’t do it again,” I assured her.
As committed as I was to the throuple, I needed friends. I’d been away from New York for thirty years. A few of my childhood friends still lived in New York, but they had families, jobs, lives – and nobody lived in my neighborhood. Desperate for connections, I made friends in the elevator, on the subway, sitting at Starbucks. I would go out to bars, by myself, after the Hello Fresh was cleared from the table each night. Sipping my vodka martini, I talked to whoever was game.
Eventually, I downloaded the dating apps and started meeting men for drinks or dinner. My parents, notorious for their late bedtimes, would always be up when I got home. They’d ask questions I didn’t have the energy to answer after spending the night telling my life story to strangers. “Ask me in the morning,” I’d say. They would.
Of course, there is a limit to how much you want to share with your parents. Sure, we were open and honest in a way we’d never been, but deep inside me was the 16-year-old girl who lost her virginity in her bedroom with Showtime at The Apollo playing on mute, my mom and dad asleep in the next room. Kissing and telling was not in the nature of our relationship.
One day, seven months into my time with my parents, I found a pimple on my “lady part” – at least, I was pretty sure that’s what it was,
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