The Emptying Nest: One Flew Off to Portland

After fifty years of housing children, the last nest is about to be emptied out.  My son Will and stepson Jeremy have been living with us since we bought the apartment.  Will is staying until the end of June. Jeremy flew off last week.

Our NY living room. Jeremy on the left, Willie on the right. 

Jeremy was labeled with learning difficulties as a little kid, which set him on a middle class LD education and career track: special ed programs in his New Jersey suburban public school, Winston Prep high school in New York, then NYIT, a tech college that provides basic social skills and training for jobs.  After Jeremy left school, he found work through VESID, a New York program that helps adults with disabilities find a job. Jeremy's was in a mailroom, managed by a contractor to major corporations for office services.  He held this job for 20 years, surviving recessions and several changes in both his contracting agencies and the businesses they contracted with.  He has been the most consistently employed of all our kids.

Over the years, Jeremy also carved out a satisfying social life for himself at a couple local Irish bars, where he hung out regularly on the weekends, drinking a few beers and wearing different sports caps and jerseys depending on the favorite team in that night's big game.  At home, during the weeknights he typically watched a game on TV or his DVDs (James Bond and Star Wars being consistent favorites) or listened to CDs (mostly heavy metal, but he also was drawn to the Three Tenors and Yanni).  He kept in touch with some friends from his previous schools, who lived in other cities and whom he occasionally visited.

For the last 12 years, Jeremy was indentured through his contractor to Bingham McCutchen, a global law firm. He got up every morning at 5:00 AM and went off to open up the offices, where he delivered the lawyers' mail, did heavy lifting, and worked with his colleagues to make sure the highly billable packages and documents moved in and out of the offices smoothly.  He was regular as a clock, almost never got sick, and took only 3 weeks vacation.  (Because of the changes in contracting agencies, his vacation rebooted with every transition, so after 20 years of steady work, he had accumulated only this amount of time off.) 

According to Wikipedia, Bingham McCutchen placed among the top 5 in Fortune Magazine's "Top-Paying Companies" every year since 2006, peaking at #1 in 2013, 2009, and 2008." Until the last two years of working there, Jeremy was only making minimum wage. The contracting company finally gave him a raise, but after deducting health benefits and taxes, he still probably netted only about $17,000 a year  

Jeremy hadn't wanted to leave New York but there was no way his income could have supported even a small apartment in the boroughs.  He didn't want a roommate and he definitely didn't want to go to Hudson. The only option left was to move to Portland where his mother and stepfather live.

Over the last four days before his departure to Portland -- not including our family dinner -- Jeremy was thrown three parties: two by the staff of his regular bars and one by his colleagues in the mailroom, who pooled their money together and gave him a cake and $200: Jeremy's bonus after 12 loyal years working at the "Top Paying Company."  Some of the lawyers wished him well. 

During his final weekend, we dug out his small bedroom, a clown car, where he had accumulated 20 years worth of collections: 200 sports caps, 200 heavy metal and sports t-shirts, 150 NBA and NFL jerseys, 6 boxes of CDs, and 3 boxes of DVDs. In total we packed and lugged downstairs, ready for shipping, 49 boxes weighing over 700 pounds. Jeremy said we could toss the "rest of my stuff" after he was gone: 8 bags of heavy metal magazines and NYU girls' basketball programs (heavy stock, 4-color), and about 10 other bags of whatever.

Two Sundays ago, we saw Jeremy off at LaGuardia.   His mother had already found him a small apartment a few blocks from her own home, and she emailed us yesterday that he's worked out how to get around town, has registered to vote, and is going to an employment agency this week.  Once his extensive collections have arrived, and he has found a job and a local sports bar, I am confident he will settle into a regular life in Portland, as he did in New York, reliable and steady at work, noisy with team enthusiasm at the local sports bar, and impressing everyone there with his Stars Wars trivia expertise. We miss him.