What empty nest?

It’s beginning to look like my nest may never be empty. We can’t seem to get a kid through freshman year in college. Our daughter phones home frequently, lamenting the low culture of dorm life in upstate New York. Her mournful tone sometimes turns tearfuI. She has only seen one of the Academy Award-nominated films this year. In our film-centric household, that is heresy.

I envision a three-generation household, like those in the old days, as our teens become 20-somethings and our 30-somethings move back with grandchilldren. Is this the new economy, I wonder? Or just bad parenting?

“Failure to launch” is the pop culture phrase to describe the overgrown teenager who takes over his parent’s basement rather than maturing into a job-holding, rent-paying member of society. There is usually a guitar involved.

There are so many of these launch-challenged young adults that the Obama administration is considering ways to keep young adults covered by their parent’s health insurance plans to age 29, instead of the current age 19 (22 if they are enrolled full time in college).

Three years ago, our 21-year-old son left college after four months. He lives with us in the city, in his old bedroom. A not-so-independent filmmaker, his back lot is our loft home. Recently, he showed me a sketch of a proposed floor plan for his room. It had no bed. “It looks like a living room,” I told him. “You know where they have those? In apartments!” He was proposing to replace the queen-sized bed with a sofa. He would annex the music room as his new bedroom. My answer may have been the clearest piece of communication I have had with him in 21 years. “No,” I said.

Lest you accuse me of being one of those permissive, over-indulgent, helicopter moms, let me pre-empt your criticism. I am. In my own defense, I could not have imagined a teen, let alone two, who would prefer home with Mom and Dad to a subsidized four-year romp on a college campus.

Where have we gone wrong?

My husband cites our family dinners together as a likely source of our harmony. He remembers his childhood dinners as somber occasions at best. My memories are of mealtime interrupted by loud arguments and tearful exits. To this day, I finish my meal before everyone else, anticipating an abrupt ending.

Our children have no such experience. Dinners are a time to entertain the assembled family and, more often than not, friends. I know there were grumpy moments, even the occasional tearful exit, but these were not the norm, so their occasions did not color family life with one grey hue.

It is possible that years of center stage may have ruined our kids for life as one of the many. They are used to star status, to having their opinions heard, their needs met, maybe too well.

And what about us? For all I heard about empty nest depression, I admit I never felt it. My wings are spreading nicely. I enjoy a quiet dinner with my husband, as we encounter each other as adults again. This Valentine’s Day, with both kids at home, I prepared a dinner for two, suggesting they find somewhere else to go for a few hours. They did.

While our daughter was finishing her first semester this fall, I was finishing work on a new book of photographs and poems. It required a kind of focus and attention I always found it hard to devote to projects, with two kids at home. Now, I was able to spend weekdays in the country poring over thousands of photographs to find 23 images of the river that best expressed my muse. It is work best done in solitude, without the distractions of family life.

But our daughter doesn’t really want to live at home, she says. She wants to be back in New York City, living a real life, she says. College life is a cocoon she feels ready to break.

After all these years, I think it is exactly where I want to be—in a sparsely furnished room, being fed three squares a day, with classes to attend and books to read. Why do they waste college life on the young?

- Cass Collins