There’s likely to be many tears at the high school graduations this month.  Yes, some tears of sadness to mark the move onto college but tears of joy too. That testy teenager will finally be moving out of the house!  As my sister says, “Tuition is money you pay a college to take your child off your hands!”

Seriously, while there is joy, there’s also great anxiety and angst.  Anxiety that your child will make all the right choices–ethically, morally, socially and academically–over the next four years away from the nest. In an article “For Parents: Your Life after Graduation,” noted child psychiatrist Dr. Harold Koplewicz writes,

We hope, despite all the things we didn’t do over the years, and because of the things we did do, that our children somehow have what it takes to decide for themselves what matters, to choose amid all the temptations and pressures that bombard them from the moment they step outside without parental strings.

That’s the anxiety that many mothering21.com moms have experienced and are now going through as second or third time as they launch younger children,  still feeling the angst that Dr. Koplewicz refers to:

…being a parent involves a particularly complicated kind of “letting go.” The effort, awareness and selflessness this requires is something we rarely talk about when celebrating graduations and preparing for what comes next in our children’s lives.

Good point,  although many of us are still trying to let go five or ten years after high school graduation!

The spring thaw reveals that my in-laws’ driveway is deeply rutted and in need of fresh gravel after this year’s harsh New England winter. Toting his steel rake, my husband, Richard, the oldest of Daisy and Walt Smith’s five children, walks to their house to lend a hand and stay for supper. He’s joined by all four of his siblings, only one of whom lives more than three miles from this country road where they all grew up.

In a world of constant change, my husband’s family seems rooted in a gentler time and place: a bucolic neighborhood where they’ve shared each other’s lives, and watched each other’s backs, for more than 60 years.

It’s every aged parent’s dream, and my reasonably robust 89-year-old in-laws are living it. Their daughter Kathy lives around the corner from them with her family, as does Richard and our crew. David and Marilyn and their families lived on the block, too, until the need to downsize took them a few miles down the hill. Emily, the youngest, is the only one who lives in another state, where her husband runs a business. But she comes home to Forest Lane as often as possible. Partly because, to her ten-year-old son, Jack – who’s raking away, surrounded by his aunts and uncles – this is the best place on earth.

It’s easy to see what a child finds enchanting. The 18^th century barn filled with Grandpa’s world-class antique tool collection. The big old spinning-wheel on the landing.  The richly colored folk-art rugs hooked by Grandma’s own hands; the stone hearth where her mac-and- cheese bubbles away. Most of all, Jack’s enamored of his pack of sharp-witted, good-looking older cousins – the eleven young adults (including my three) who also grew up together in this place. Some still in college, some off chasing their dreams (waitering/scriptwriting in Hollywood, rebuilding in New Orleans, outward-bounding in Oregon), some recently boomeranged home.

The irony is, what got us to stay here is what forces many people to move away from family: the economy. In the early 1950s, Walt Smith was hired to build a house in a sparsely populated section of town.  Its cash-poor owner offered to pay him in several acres of land instead. Who knew that over the next several decades, property values would skyrocket, and this sleepy Connecticut burg would become a posh suburb known for fine schools and gracious living?  In the 1980s, Walt gifted each of his adult children a plot of land (or its value). We could never afford to live here otherwise. And so the Smith family neighborhood – or Walt(on)’s Mountain, as it amuses me to call it – was born.  It’s been a sweetheart deal. Always a babysitter somewhere, a spare vehicle when yours is in the shop, a can of tomato sauce when you run short.

If nobody’s home, just let yourself in and take what you need.

After the yard-work’s done, Sunday supper goes on the table – at six o’clock, like it has every evening for the past 65 years. The boomerang kids rush in to partake.  Long tapers in brass candlesticks are the room’s only illumination. No topic is taboo or will be met with derision. A bit of deft teasing, maybe, but never derision.

And after dinner, the three aunties (who have seven sons between them) huddle around my daughter for girl-talk about her upcoming wedding. Grandma pulls out some old photos: the marriage, on January 27, 1946, of Miss Daisy Alice Ahern of Mitchell, South Dakota, to Mr. Walter Roswell Truman Smith of Stamford, Connecticut, whom she met when he drove out to Mitchell to deposit his brother at college there. She didn’t know him very long before he went off to war and she promised to wait.  They were 23.

“What time is it, Daiz?” Walt calls out pointedly, and we know it’s time to go home. On this last night of winter, a full moon lights our way; each step is familiar and holds a memory.

Across the street: the original house where Daisy and Walt lived and raised their kids. And where they first laid eyes upon me: Richard’s brash bride-to-be, the city girl who couldn’t drive a car, grow a plant, bake a pie, or sew. (I did learn to drive.)

Down the road: Marilyn’s former home, with the in-ground pool that she and her ex added – bless them – so that roving bands of half-naked little cousins could splash away the summer days, under the watchful eyes of as many as a dozen adults who truly cared about them.

Around the corner, on the cul de sac: Dave and Lil’s old house, before Lil got sick, where once reigned a snazzy backyard treehouse complete with electricity, and a zip-line worthy of Tarzan.

And then our house, with a 44-acre nature preserve to the east, and Kathy and Brad to the west. Between our two yards, which are separated by towering birches, is a footpath. A footpath worn so deep, trod so often, by six children and their two sets of parents, that nothing can possibly grow over the jagged tangle of exposed roots.

“Will whoever lives here next, after we’ve all gone, understand what this path was all about?” Kathy sometimes wonders aloud.

Not everyone does understand. The truth is, some people are aghast when they hear I live next to the in-laws. I get this, because in some families, the signpost to such a neighborhood may as well read “Domestic Hell.” But Daisy and Walt are unfailingly rational, careful and respectful, and the rest of us work at following their lead. Take Thanksgiving, which they’ve hosted for each of those 65 years, transforming the old tool-barn into a rustic tableau worthy of Martha Stewart. On Walt’s Mountain, the holiday meal takes place on Saturday evenings, so that children and grandchildren are able to spend the traditional Thursday with the other side of the family, or with friends, or however they choose. All the running back and forth that so many couples undertake,  all that “but we went to your folks last time” business… eliminated. And did I mention: since their oldest son converted to Judaism, married a Jewish woman (me), and raised an observant family, Thanksgiving dinner is kosher – for everyone?

Pure genius.

The flip side? When one of our kids messes up, the whole village suffers. But even then, they can always come home and find the right person to talk to. An aunt who’s a nurse and can discretely reassure you that your weird rash is not herpes. An uncle to expertly guide you through your credit-card woes. A cousin who cares enough to tell you to step up your hygiene if you ever want a girlfriend. Or the resident night owl (me), if you just feel like hanging out and watching a movie at 1 a.m.

Do the kids know how special it is, to grow up like this? It seems they do, now.  “You never feel alone,” said Daughter #2. “You know there’s always somebody looking out for you.”  Beautiful, I gushed.  She sighed:  “Well, yeah, except in high school, when you wanted to throw a party while your parents were gone.”

Will anyone ever understand what this path was all about? When Kathy says this, I want to cover my ears, because we know that the sun will all too soon set upon this glorious day. About the future, I have only one certainty: that I cannot do unto my children as my in-laws – and my own dear, departed, generous parents – did unto my husband and me. We have no land, no nest-egg, no carrot to keep them nearby.  Odds are they won’t choose to replicate the life they’ve treasured here; each of my children is determined to forge a new path, which is as it should be.

But will their children, those cousins, really know each other? Will they know me? Or will my own offspring be among the seven million Americans who are defined as “long-distance caregivers,” i.e. those living at least 450 miles from their aging elders?

In fact,  recent studies by the Pew Organization suggest a shift back to multigenerational households, and to family neighborhoods like Walt’s Mountain: “The majority of U.S.-born adults (56%) have not lived outside their birth state, and of the 37% who have stayed in their hometown, three-quarters say the main reason is because they want to be near family.”

Another Pew survey reports that even families who live far away from each other are keeping in touch better than they once did, thanks to the lower costs and greater ease of communications technologies, “with some 73% report[ing] that on an average day they speak with a family member who doesn’t live in their house.”

Maybe somebody will understand that worn path between the houses. Maybe our own children will. And maybe they will say to us – no matter how far their wings take them from these old roots, and whether or not we’re still around  - the words I say now, to the ones who came before me:

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

The conversational  closeness that we shared with our little children can return with our adult children

 New York Times reporter Michael Winerip writes an excellent column called GenerationB (as in Baby Boomer) for the New York Times.  He often strikes a chord that resonates with the parents of adult children.  Earlier this fall his column “Life’s Travels for a Father and a Son” centered on his oldest son’s departure for senior year in college.  The column considered much more than the hurried goodbye:  memories, plans, hopes, the father-son connection.

 One line particularly resonated with me.  Winerip recounted a dinner that he and his son shared, just the two of them, where the conversation swirled around many subjects. Winerip writes:

 It was wonderful and surprising how quickly that feeling of closeness — present daily until they become teenagers — came flooding back.

 The teenage years and the great silence.  That’s hard to adjust to after the nursery and grammar school years when many (not all) children tell you everything, when their thoughts tumble out spontaneously.  That feeling of closeness does disappear during the teenage years, depending upon the child and his or her personality. 

 When does that conversational closeness come back, if ever? Of course we don’t expect our adult children to tell us everything (as if they ever did).  But the easy conversations, the bantering back and forth, even the friendly disagreements are part of the fabric of the family.  Sometimes in our 24/7 world it seems that every conversation, every text, every email has to have a point, something to be checked off from to-do list, even in our dealings with our grown children. 

 Perhaps we have to build in some “hanging out” time with our adult children: time to just sit around in the backyard, at the beach, around a leisurely dinner, watching a game, rocking a newborn and just chatting.  It’s during those random, unplanned times that the feeling of closeness can creep in and envelope us like the fog on little cat feet.