Irretrievable Decisions

Dispiriting conversation with Max a couple of days ago. He cannot find a job. This is a kid who's brilliant, accomplished and who graduated with honors from Stanford University.

I'm tempted to blame this on the fact that he's living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Except a little bit of research reveals that the official unemployment rate in the San Francisco Bay Area is down to 6%. Higher than that for his demographic cohort, I'm imagining, the cohort with the unfortunate Marvel comix nickname, the Millennials.

For whatever reason, Max decided to put off law school applications for a year. I think he's waffling. I don't necessarily blame him. Worst case scenario: He graduates from law school with $100,000 worth of debt and he still can't find a job. Or he can find a job, because with his grades and LSAT scores, he can get into a top-ten school. But it's a job with one of those big, unscrupulous Lockhart & Gardener type firms where he's expected to toil 80 hours a week if he wants to pay off those school loans, and he might as well shoot himself.

I don't quite understand why he decided to put off the law school application process, but I suspect in his own mind he's not sure he wants to be a lawyer.

"So don't be a lawyer," I said to him on the phone. "Get a teaching credential. I think you'd be a brilliant teacher. Thing is, honey, you gotta do something --"

"Mom. Chill. I know I have to do something."

But does he?

When he was visiting me in Ithaca a couple of years ago, he picked a very deliberate fight with me. "I think it's entirely your fault that I'm unable to commit to stuff," he said.

I was flabbergasted.

"Well, you kept pounding it into my head that I should never make any decisions that were -- 'irretrievable,' I believe, is the word that you used."

I thought this accusation very unjust.

"Max," I said, "I meant irretrievable in the context of your adolescence. Like you shouldn't get some 17 year old girl whose parents don't believe in abortions -- which is 99% of the parents in Monterey County -- pregnant. And you shouldn't be busted with half an ounce of pot -- even if the local authorities don't prosecute -- because you'll never be eligible for a federally insured school loan. That kind of thing. I didn't mean you should never commit yourself to anything."

I'm fairly sure that Max's job woes are at least in part due to geography. The Bay Area has always sucked as far as undifferentiated jobs go -- there are just too many people competing for them. But Max is not going to leave the Bay Area. He was born and raised in Northern California and is in a serious relationship with a woman who was born and raised in Northern California. Liza did her Yale stint plus one additional year freezing in New Haven and then she went Home. I doubt she's gonna live anywhere outside California again. And Max is in love with Liza.

You either love California, or you can't wait to leave.

Out of all the RLS posse, I would have thought Nathan the most unlikely to leave California, but he's the one a decade later whom I don't think is ever going back. Not even after he inherits the impressive ________ mansion. I think when John and Celeste die, Nathan will sell the house, invest in secure municipal bonds and hightail it back to the East Coast ASAP.

###

Jeremy and I have become close pals to the extent that it's possible for a 61 year old white woman to become close pals with a 25 year old African American man. We duck out at lunchtime and go for long riverside strolls together during which we talk about our hopes and fears. Jeremy isn't particularly optimistic about his future either. He's doing the VISTA thing because he didn't want to spend the rest of his life as a busboy at Appleby's.

"It's so tough for your generation," I say. "You know, the incredibly high taxes you're gonna be paying for the rest of your life are not gonna buy you one fucking thing. You'll merely be paying interest on loans from the Chinese that went to pay for my generation's entitlements."

Jeremy laughs. "We'll default," he says. "We'll host the flash mob revolution! And don't worry, Patrizia. When we're cornering Boomers in the streets and herding them into the reeducation camps, I'll hide you in my root cellar."

"You don't have a root cellar," I point out.

"Well, there is that," he agrees. "Maybe you should be worried."