You Can Always Go Home Again

Today, our second oldest son is moving back in with us--not forever, but for the upcoming school year. When I told my dad this recently, he raised his eyebrows as if to say, "Better you than me!"  The last thing he can imagine is wanting to have an adult child move back home to live with him and my mom.

Maybe that's just because my siblings and I are not nearly as cool and fun as my own boys are.  Because my husband and I are not recoiling in horror at the idea of having this grown child sharing a roof with us--quite the opposite.  We are just thrilled.  Our #2 son has been living in a bachelor apartment (read: disaster area that almost always looks like it's just been hit by a tornado--a tornado that not only scatters clothing all over the place, but leaves piles of dirty dishes with weeks-old decaying food scraps stuck to them piled up high in the sink) for the past two years, while teaching math at a large public high school.  This bachelor apartment he inhabited tended to have that unique odor about it that we folks around here fondly call "the smell of a man," and even multiple air fresheners were not able to totally mask it.  He's been getting along just fine (for a non-neatnik, anyway) up until now, but his car recently died and he wanted to finally buy a brand spanking new one.  On top of that, his rent was going to go up significantly, and he was unsuccessful at finding a roommate to share costs.  So we offered to let him move home for a year to help him get a little bit ahead financially, and although the commute to work will be a good bit longer, he decided to take us up on the offer.

If there's one thing we want all of our boys to know, it's that they CAN go home again.  This house is here when they need it; it's so big and empty that their dad and I are rattling around in it most of the time now anyway.  And we're traveling about so much these days that chances are our boy will be living in this five-bedroom/two-and-a-half-bath Colonial all by himself half the time.  Between his teaching job, his football coaching responsibilities, and his part-time landscaping job, it's not like he's going to be hanging around here all day long asking, "What's for dinner?"  (Actually, making his dinners--and doing his laundry--are two chores I'm going to take on with joy.  This is a one-year situation, I believe, and I'm going to milk it for all it's worth!  I miss having boys to take care of!)

It seems like yesterday that this son, who is now 28, was in kindergarten and looked like this:

Last week, I posted my second grade school picture on this blog, and one of my nieces commented that it looked like my second-born when he was a little guy (wearing a wig, of course).

What do you say, dear readers?  Does that boy look like his mommy?