trembling, I counted down the days.
2
âWhat is it with young people these days?â, I wondered more and more. âArenât they angry anymore, or what? Tonio is eighteen, has his high school diploma, studies at university ⦠but is still living with his parents. In his boyhood room. Of course weâre secretly glad to postpone the empty nest syndrome ⦠but for him â¦â
Parents in the same situation, with more sociological instinct, would reply: âWhat it is, is thereâs no generation gap anymore. Well, okay, there is, but itâs not such a chasm. The generational differences donât lead to insoluble conflicts anymore. Everything can be discussed. Everything can be solved. Why run away from a father who doesnât want to murder you, nor you him? Whenâs the last time Tonio and you argued?â
Never, actually. Our only argument, which never really got off the ground either, was still to come. Since he was a child, until he was at least sixteen, he would ask at the end of the day: âWork well today?â (Just like, at the end of a meal, he would ask: âMay I be excused?â He would drop his voice an octave, as though wanting to feign the maturity befitting the somewhat affected question. He must have picked up this nicety somewhere and appropriated it, because he didnât learn it from us.) You couldnât argue with this kind of kid even if you tried.
Barely two years after graduating high school, he managed to find a sublet apartment in De Baarsjes with his best friend Jim. Standing on his own feet suddenly outweighed the cushy room and board at home. It was April 2008. I wasnât even able to help him move, as I was in the midst of a series of guest lectures at TU Delft. I do recall the stab in my heart: he had flown the nest after all. I felt a bit slighted, so that the missing generation gap also took its toll. All right, if he really wanted to trade his space, his comfy, well-appointed room on the Johannes Verhulststraat, for half a stuffy flat over in Amsterdam West: fine. Bye-bye, kid, donât let me catch you on our doorstep with your tail between your legs.
He had completed his first year at the Amsterdam Photo Academy, but wanted to switch to the photography department at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Around the time he moved to the De Baarsjes, he broke off his second course of study, grumbling about âchangesâ that had been introduced out of the blue. I read him the riot act for his gross lack of ambition. As I said, this confrontation, too, was a dud. He swore he was brimming with ambition, but that heâd rather, after the summer, tackle a proper university major. Until then he was planning to get a job to make ends meet â well, almost ⦠hopefully we would still take care of his rent â¦
He found work at Dixons, a computer and photography-accessories shop on the Kinkerstraat. We saw very little of him after that. If he came round for a visit, it was usually on Sunday evening, when we would get Surinamese takeaway. Sometimes he would give us advance notice, but more often he just appeared in the living room.
3
I was up on the third floor preparing my lectures, while one flight below Tonio dismantled his room â the room weâd had renovated and furnished for him only a couple of years earlier, far too late. Suddenly the alarming noise of falling objects rose straight through the ceiling. I raced down the stairs.
The space stripped quite bare by now, Tonio stood desperately propping up a set of connected wall cupboards in an attempt to keep them from crashing down for good: the anchors had come loose.
âStupid me â again,â he moaned. I helped by adding my own clumsiness to his. Once the danger had been averted, I returned to my desk rather than help him finish the job. I made a feeble promise to come see his new place once heâd moved.
We had lived under the same roof
2
âWhat is it with young people these days?â, I wondered more and more. âArenât they angry anymore, or what? Tonio is eighteen, has his high school diploma, studies at university ⦠but is still living with his parents. In his boyhood room. Of course weâre secretly glad to postpone the empty nest syndrome ⦠but for him â¦â
Parents in the same situation, with more sociological instinct, would reply: âWhat it is, is thereâs no generation gap anymore. Well, okay, there is, but itâs not such a chasm. The generational differences donât lead to insoluble conflicts anymore. Everything can be discussed. Everything can be solved. Why run away from a father who doesnât want to murder you, nor you him? Whenâs the last time Tonio and you argued?â
Never, actually. Our only argument, which never really got off the ground either, was still to come. Since he was a child, until he was at least sixteen, he would ask at the end of the day: âWork well today?â (Just like, at the end of a meal, he would ask: âMay I be excused?â He would drop his voice an octave, as though wanting to feign the maturity befitting the somewhat affected question. He must have picked up this nicety somewhere and appropriated it, because he didnât learn it from us.) You couldnât argue with this kind of kid even if you tried.
Barely two years after graduating high school, he managed to find a sublet apartment in De Baarsjes with his best friend Jim. Standing on his own feet suddenly outweighed the cushy room and board at home. It was April 2008. I wasnât even able to help him move, as I was in the midst of a series of guest lectures at TU Delft. I do recall the stab in my heart: he had flown the nest after all. I felt a bit slighted, so that the missing generation gap also took its toll. All right, if he really wanted to trade his space, his comfy, well-appointed room on the Johannes Verhulststraat, for half a stuffy flat over in Amsterdam West: fine. Bye-bye, kid, donât let me catch you on our doorstep with your tail between your legs.
He had completed his first year at the Amsterdam Photo Academy, but wanted to switch to the photography department at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Around the time he moved to the De Baarsjes, he broke off his second course of study, grumbling about âchangesâ that had been introduced out of the blue. I read him the riot act for his gross lack of ambition. As I said, this confrontation, too, was a dud. He swore he was brimming with ambition, but that heâd rather, after the summer, tackle a proper university major. Until then he was planning to get a job to make ends meet â well, almost ⦠hopefully we would still take care of his rent â¦
He found work at Dixons, a computer and photography-accessories shop on the Kinkerstraat. We saw very little of him after that. If he came round for a visit, it was usually on Sunday evening, when we would get Surinamese takeaway. Sometimes he would give us advance notice, but more often he just appeared in the living room.
3
I was up on the third floor preparing my lectures, while one flight below Tonio dismantled his room â the room weâd had renovated and furnished for him only a couple of years earlier, far too late. Suddenly the alarming noise of falling objects rose straight through the ceiling. I raced down the stairs.
The space stripped quite bare by now, Tonio stood desperately propping up a set of connected wall cupboards in an attempt to keep them from crashing down for good: the anchors had come loose.
âStupid me â again,â he moaned. I helped by adding my own clumsiness to his. Once the danger had been averted, I returned to my desk rather than help him finish the job. I made a feeble promise to come see his new place once heâd moved.
We had lived under the same roof
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