So, I Was Supposed To Describe Home At Twelve (project eleven)

So, I Was Supposed To Describe Home At Twelve  (project eleven)

Hmm, describe "home at twelve," eh?  Just to make it interesting, let's assume the question was to describe "home at twelve" on Saturday night.  These days, I'm always.  When I was twenty-two, the night was just beginning--we'd arrived at Chicago's Near North Side and spent an hour in the bar we'd agreed on as start.  Home at twelve meant we really didn't go out, one or all of us had to work the next day.  At twenty-two, there were nights we went to more bars than I remember.  I know, I know.  We marvel at the fact that we survived the ride home.

At thirty-two, home at twelve (on a weekend) meant we had hosted the evening's card game, half-listening for
fussing from our babies, asleep in the next room.  Often a playpen was acting as a portable bed for a child brought along to the game.  Too young to leave with a babysitter, or perhaps one's sitter had started having a life and was busy that night.  Mostly, no sitter meant too long between paydays to add that expense to gas, card game stakes, BYOB's et al.

At forty-two, home at twelve meant the evening in, or perhaps dinner, then dessert at home.  We had friends, mostly related to kids' teams.  Both were young teenagers, and we kept them occupied with soccer teams, and sometimes just stayed home watching over them.  They were a couple of years away from the nights they waited until we were asleep at twelve to push the car out of the driveway, and pop the clutch when they were far enough away that the noise would not wake us up.

So, on to twelve at home at age fifty-two.  By then, with both kids away at college or finished, we were no longer keeping any late night vigils to determine when or if they were coming home.  Granted, these days there is a new sort of teenage period that consumes the twenties, emergent adulthood.  Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, who coined the term, says the profile of the “emergent adult” includes “identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a sense of possibilities.”

But the difference is that in their twenties, these are young adults in every way, except they have not found their ultimate career, marriage partner, had children, purchased a home, etc.  These are the markers of true adulthood, and most of my generation had covered all of them by their 27th birthday, but that was then.....  As young adults they must be "allowed to take care of themselves."  And this was just a long way of answering the question.  "Home at twelve" by the time I was fifty-two, I was sound asleep.

Finally, to round out the picture with the most recent, "home at twelve" at age sixty-two, I was most likely wide awake, struggling with insomnia.