It just happened

In this shifting continuum of the love / hate relationship I have with my adopted culture, I have realised that in part I have become European.

When I first met my husband, he was living at home with his mother. 34 and still at home. She did his cooking, ironed his shirts, cleaned the house, made his bed. You know, all the things that parents (well other people´s parents) did before their children left home. At a normal age. Like 18 or 19. When they went off to Uni or moved into a grotty share accommodation and lived on 2 minute noodles and did not even own a broom.

Like you, I wondered what might be wrong with him to live at home so long. Thoughts of `Mummy´s boys`and pants pulled up to arm pits came into my spectrum. Until I looked around and saw that this is just how people live. Life is not so agist or age segregated as it is in other countries. Here life is a conglomerate of all experiences. Life are inclusive. It is common to find four generations sitting around the same table at a party. When parents turn up to teenage parties to find their children drunk and lying under the table, doing something sordid with some strange person, they will go over to the corner to talk with their mother, or sit and have a Schnapps with the birthday person (you can´t keep secrets in a small village anyway, so might as well do it in the open). This is just how things are. Children inherit the house where they will look after their parents. And in return the parents look after the children.

Sounds ideal. But it is like any family. There are fights. There are disagreements. There will be times when people don´t talk to each other. But we live together. We either ignore it or work it out.

But think of the advantages. I did this week when I had one child at home sick and another which needed to be taken to kindergarten. Oma was there to help. It was a matter of sending Sweetie over to ask. When I was sick she was able to give me the space to sleep without having children crawl over me (with my husband unable to take any time off at the moment). And do all the shopping. And the cooking. And the cleaning. And the cake that needed to be baked for the party. And the letters that have to be signed for. And financial help as she lives here too. And ironing those few shirts so I can focus on my studying. And playing Uno thousands of time when I am played out. And those hundreds of other things that I would take too long to list.

It was in an Ikea magazine that one woman said when moving to Italy, 'yes, it is an adjustment to learn to live with your mother-in-law, but after adapting it is more of 'how can I live without them'. I have become European. I understand the importance of family. Family - the extended version.