The Kind that Bind

At the start of a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles with her family over the holidays, Miss Cheapist enjoyed the intimacy of the parent/child relationship. She reveled in being able to have mature, non-judgmental conversations with her mother where “active listening” prevailed. It was initially comforting to be with someone who knew her every flaw and made sure she stayed hydrated and ate fruits and vegetables. Miss Cheapist even entertained the fantasy of moving closer to her mother, for good. But after days of zipping through long highways, dry canyons, palm-lined boulevards and broad coastlines, she unconsciously began to regress into her 15-year old self. The car walls folded in on her, and she wanted to argue, sulk, and respond defensively, even without provocation. Not even an “In-and-Out” burger along Highway 101 took the edge off as she struggled with the contradictory impulses to draw her family closer, and at the same time, pull away. All this made her wonder, is it an asset or a liability to live near those who reared us? What is our obligation to our parents as adults, and can we afford to be cheap?

According to H., a childhood friend who moved to Manhattan immediately after graduating from an unnamed Northeastern women’s college, the city is divided into two groups: A) those who stayed/moved back into the city and remain close to their parent(s) and B) those who left their hometowns with many dreams, uncertain of when they would return home and reestablish those bonds. On this same topic, H. also offered an observation about “Sex and the City,” commenting that although the show thoroughly reviewed many topics, rarely were parents and their influence on urban life explored. Why? Is family too complicated to be sexy?

Western psychoanalytic theory argues that in order to fully thrive, one must separate herself from her parents and develop an independent identity. Yet many native New Yorkers, even those who worship at the altar of analysis, still cherish those ties that bind, living in their parents’ homes (or next door), having weekly dinners, seeking advice on all major decisions, relying on familiar networks for employment, and frequenting the establishments they grew up with. To a certain extent, this loyalty and closeness is enviable; in a city that is based upon relationships and insular communities, who wants to start from ground zero all the time? The benefits of maintaining a commitment to ones family are innumerable, and those who weather the highs and lows seem to be well rewarded. On the outside, it appears that tolerating the low level buzz of dysfunction is a cost worth taking on. After all, we were probably far more annoying as teenagers.

But for many, such closeness makes it difficult to break from the conventions and expectations of childhood. Even if we experienced periods of rebellion, it becomes so easy to reinforce the past. Deep into our thirties, we wonder if we can even recognize ourselves in the thick of our own inherited prejudices and idiosyncrasies. For this reason just as many New Yorkers have left for other cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, looking to gain space, find themselves, and put down new roots. However, is it so easy to just pick up and leave? As the years pass, there is increased responsibility to care for parents who, may become frail or just yearn for a closer connection to their children. Although many see this as a burden, there is nothing more satisfying that being able to provide for them as adults, and to have few regrets about abandonment or fears that our own children will do the same to us.

But what about Miss Cheapist? She moved away from home years ago filled with possibility of gaining greater opportunity in New York, wanting to make everyone proud of her accomplishments. With time and many transitions, Miss Cheapist discovered that one can live a morally sound, fun, and rather unexceptional life in New York, and dreams don’t easily transpire into reality. And worse, many of her native New Yorker friends do inaccurately view her as indulged in her autonomy, and belonging to a tribe of people who have temporarily settled here. Although the city, her relationship to a lifelong mate and the mission of her profession still holds great meaning for her, Miss Cheapist is always haunted by the possibility that she may be making a terrible mistake. Is she being emotionally cheap by maintaining this distance, or is she waiting to mature into someone with greater resilience, and perhaps even more needed? As she wrestles with this matter, she can’t take for granted that it is a luxury to have a happy and healthy parent. She can afford a bit of freedom, but not ingratitude. For the time being, she will remain a child.

Sweet, Sweet Fantasy (with apologies to M. Carey)

(the popular fantasy of an apartment in Harlem overlooking Central Park)

Several years ago, Miss Cheapist tried therapy as a way to navigate different transitions that she faced. At the time, it was productive, primarily because she realized how little she really understood about herself. One memorable evening on the couch, she shared a feeling of suffocation from the desires and expectations of those closest to her. With fatigue, she sighed, “I’m just so overwhelmed with everyone else’s fantasies!” Her therapist, a woman who never changed the register of her voice, and colored her office with photographs from travels in the Himalayas, responded, “And what is your fantasy?” Her question gave Miss Cheapist pause. She wondered, when it seemed easier to respond to others, rather than barrel forward with her own dreams, did she really dare to fantasize? Or by doing so, was she only setting herself up for failure? Even after using the word so glibly to describe the predicament of others, when she had to look inward, the concept of “fantasy” really seemed so difficult to define.

In the holiday season when everyone is determined to articulate their wishes, and for the less cheap, make the wishes of others actually come true, it seems appropriate to determine the value of fantasies. Who can even afford them? At first blush, it seems that fantasy comes easy, especially through television. Miss Cheapist, most recently, has thrown herself into the unexpectedly enthralling Gossip Girl: a constructed TV world of earnest, class-conscious teen love, self-congratulatory WASPdom, unfettered bitchiness, and photogenic NYC streetscapes. The unapologetic Whiteness of the show was potentially alienating, and yet Miss Cheapist found herself emotionally drawn to the characters (who doesn’t want to be Serena Van der Woodsen). This show has become a panacea for the seasonal affective disorder that inevitably arrives with late autumn. Can we call that appeal anything other than the power of fantasy? Yes, television, with its porn aesthetic and ability to take ordinary people and transform them into 21^st century beauty queens, definitely provides fantasy.

However, underlying our fantasies is the belief that we can access them, making them another type of aspiration. Are fantasies our generation’s way of setting goals? The fantasies of Miss Cheapist’s peer group are diverse. Some revolve around getting out of work for the rest of our healthy, able years: spending ones days trying to catch the largest fish imaginable on a fly rod, becoming a trucker and traveling the highways of America with ones spouse in the passenger seat, moving to rural America and owning a gun, or having a baby and becoming a stay-at-home mom. And other fantasies seem more pragmatic, a way to cope with everyday anxieties: having one extra bedroom, buying a brownstone in Bed-Stuy only to have the market immediately take off, renovating a kitchen in the Provencal style, affording an original Eames chair, and of course, marrying rich. Other fantasies involve wealth achieved by artistic impulse: producing the next home design trend from ones Bushwick studio based on an art school thesis, going to architecture school and becoming the next Maya Lin, establishing a homemade jewelry business, selling restored vintage clothes on E-bay, moving to China and capitalizing on the new contemporary art scene…and of course, the fantasy of having ones blog discovered by an book agent and becoming the next Bridget Jones! Miss Cheapist is even willing to admit that she recently wished for unnamed forces to catapult her small, episodic blog about an whiny, cheap, Asian girl into a cable television show that rivaled “Sex and the City” in its scope and impact.

Will these fantasies be mocked years later as mere indulgence? Will they be seen as suffocating the less fortunate of this post-Gilded Age? Or will the residue of Internet millionaires (hello, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google, et. al) and Myspace-created celebrities actually mark this decade as a revial of the American dream? Are fantasies heightened because people believe now, more than ever, that they can be realized? Or perhaps we are craving fantasy in the face of an impeding national crisis: economic recession, environmental catastrophe, recognition of the limitations of democracy, heightened nativism, and a loss of faith in the ability of public institutions to lead and provide a safety net for the neediest. Oh Miss Cheapist, really, what is your fantasy?

Down with Downward Mobility

Ten years of working as a teacher, and two expensive degrees later, Miss Cheapist contemplated the notion of downward mobility—or more specifically, whether or not her personal ethos of fiscal cheapism and emotional generosity was working for her. She began to yearn for the advancement experienced by her corporate lawyer friends, who once toiled away at teaching and publishing jobs, and years later, regained consciousness and chose to obtain marketable graduate degrees. Now they make six figures with chunky bonuses. When the thrill of being the first in her family to receive such an elite education finally subsided, Miss Cheapist had to question the true value of her education and the cost of her parents’ sacrifice. Was teaching a true calling, or was it delaying her from developing ambitions and a sense of practicality? Moreover, was she isolating herself from others with the claim that “money didn’t matter,” and that she couldn’t do a job “just for the money?”

After a quick survey, she identified three distinct groups of peers:
1) those enjoying life without analysis, primarily with inherited wealth and expensive hobbies
2) Those who pulled themselves up from their bootstraps, claiming they “earned” it all themselves; and,
3) A nebulous group of others who lived paycheck to paycheck and seemed socially assimilated, but were not on track to meet or surpass their parents in income, assets or sensibility.

This final group remains the downwardly mobile. They are often overwhelmed with the achievements of earlier generations, but believing that their parents sacrificed for their happiness, can justify their own personal choices. They say things like, “I can’t believe my mother held a full-time job, and had dinner ready for us when we came home,” or, “how did they have two kids and a Jetta by the time they were our age?” The downwardly mobile are insightful and articulate--but can they truly be happy if they do not reproduce the life their parents provided for them?

Sadly enough, Miss Cheapist never imagined herself being downwardly mobile. After all, she had a work ethic (think Lloyd on Entourage). Initially attracted to teaching because it was creative, autonomous and ‘meaning-driven,’ the profession lost some of its luster when her former colleagues left schools for corporate America (upwardly mobile), or to work in restaurants and make more money in tips alone (upwardly mobile?), and new colleagues entered as “career changers,” receiving bonuses for their “past work experience” in valued sectors (downwardly mobile, clearly). They were all good people who helped her to feel a part of a dynamic educational community. But after accumulating years of street ‘cred and few transferable skills, Miss Cheapist quickly learned that the only way to make more money was to become a principal. Unfortunately, she did not have the same drive as those who had taught for only few years and felt qualified to run a school, or others who could really serve as vanguards in their own communities. The thought of starting up a whole institution from scratch and carving away a cult of personality in the name of school reform seemed even less suitable for Miss Cheapist than finding work on Wall Street. She was never a fan of reinventing the wheel.

So will cheapism sustain her? Is it realistic to make a difference, but not make a dime? The new climate of transforming the public sector into a “business model,” has pushed for a new language of quantification, and forced all employees to become professional fundraisers and data hounds. Few went into the field for that kind work, especially not to receive lower pay than real bean counters! To many it seems like a wasted investment on education to toil away in the world of middle-management at ones community grassroots organization, and watch CEOs become Executive Directors of the United Ways of the world. Her skepticism depresses Miss Cheapist more than her paycheck. Perhaps she would feel better and develop some real ambitions if there was more respect assigned to the field, and if others could recognize that she doesn’t get paid less--others just get paid far too much! In the meantime, she just has to stay cheap. And maybe get better at math.