The Wild Child Grows Up? Maybe a Little?

Remember my daughter, the Wild Child? She came into town last night from Tahoe to spend the night before leaving with her boyfriend for Maryland today to visit his family somewhere near, I think, the Baltimore area. The boyfriend is about 12 years her senior and has commitment issues, which is just fine with her because she's been burned a couple times and is hesitant to get involved too. But we sense things might be getting a little more serious if he's taking her home to meet his parents. AND he's asked her to live with him.

Now the funny thing is that they've been more or less living together for the past year, first as roommates in a house and then later as . . . well, it's a little hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot in a second. But, anyway, I guess in his mind, those experiences don't really count because they weren't "living together"--as in no commitment, not even to a lease. Okay, whatever! All I know is that he seems to be good for her and treats her well, and she's happy and healthy, so we have the important things covered this time around.

So, back to the weird living situation. That house they were roommates at? Well the owner was an absentee owner who had hired a couple to manage the house. It was really a four-bedroom house with a cottage out back where the managers lived, and they rented out the other four bedrooms. According to the Wild Child, the managers were tweakers--literally, as in meth users. As such, they were undependable and volatile. They failed to maintain the house, and when anything needed repair, the husband would do some cheap patch job. You have to wonder about the owner never checking on his property, and if all the Wild Child told us is true, the managers are surely turning a decent rental property into a hovel. After several months of putting up with these managers, my daughter and her boyfriend got fed up and moved out in April. But they had nowhere to move to, and rentals--at reasonable prices--are hard to find in Tahoe. So, for a month or so, they were sleeping on friends' couches and living in their cars--often parked side by side. Is that living together?! My daughter rented a storage unit for all her things. For a couple weeks, they rented a room in a hotel connected to the casino where my daughter worked--this was when they were having some late season snowy weather up there.

In late May, the campsites opened, and the Wild Child and her boyfriend camped. My daughter thought it was great fun. And her brother refused to speak to her because it was his opinion that she was being stupid and she wouldn't see reason when it came to her safety. My husband and I did what we could to let her know that we were concerned about her safety, but since she's an adult, we couldn't very well "put our foot down"--something our son didn't seem to understand. As you may imagine, this has been an uncomfortable situation for our family over the past few months.

Imagine, then, my joy when she told me last night that she's tired of not having a place to come home to after work where she can collapse on the couch and watch TV; a bed to sleep in; a kitchen to cook in; and a shower and/or bath to bathe in. You see, the Wild Child has to learn things for herself--as we all do to some extent--and this was one lesson she finally seems to have learned. Now all they have to do is find somewhere to live--another big hurdle in an area short of rental properties compared to the demand, but one that I hope they'll solve soon after they come home from Maryland.