Passage 2

First there were hammersbang ing. Then pa int brushes. Then carpet. Soon we had a new room above thegarage. And my grandmother moved in.

It was the late 1960s，I was 10 and had no idea that we weregoing against the grain, that the trend was for families to splinter，seniors to take better and longer care of themselves，kids to move away younger and younger.

AII I knew was that ourfamily had three generations under one roof, which made a difference in who satwhere in the car，what dessertsmysteriously disappeared overnight and how long you waited outside the bathroomdoor.

This past week，a new census report raised a lot of eyebrows.In the past decade，there has been a resuming of thefamily deck: a 30 percent rise in U. S. households with at least three generations，People are moving back in generations are consolidating.

So I guess we were aheadof our t ime. Forget about a babysitter. Of course，today this has more to do with money thananything else. Senior citizens have a harder time paying their bills and theirchiIdren have a harder time shelling out monthly checks for retirement ornursing homes. Kids can’t find jobs，even college grads.What it means, ultimately, is more people under one roof, with a broader spanof years between them. Braces and dentures. Grey hair and dyed hair. This islamented as a regrettable consequence of a feeble economy. But I’m not sure it’sa bad thing.

I learned a lot fromhaving our grandmother in the house. For one thing，it beat hiring a babysitter we didn’t like. And there was someone else to take us to school or drive us toplaces when our folks were working. There s was another family member at theschool plays and another person to cry to if we were hurting.I got to watch howmy mother related to her mother, and I saw that mine wasn’t the only

generationthat found the one before it confounding and, at times，infuriating.

I also heard more familyhistory than I did with just one older generation under the roof. There was noshortage of conversation. Dinners were louder and an imated. In short, we were bigger.My grandmother spoke about grant’s neighborhood, sitting on fire. escapes anddrinking egg creams，and talkedabout listening to the radio during the Pearl Harbor attacks. They talked aboutrelatives I' d never

metand never would meet, my bloodline. (缺失部分内容)

It wasn’t all “The WaItons”.I knew who I was and where I came from more once my grandmother called our home.

There’s a wonderful filmcalled“Avalon”that followsan immigrant’s family in the 20th century. At the beginning of the film，it is Thanksgiving，and a small city home isJammed with uncles，aunts， grandparents，kids. At the end of the film, years later, it is Thanksgiving again,and a family of four sits in a suburban kitchen eating with the TV on. Yes，it was cramped，sometimes annoying, and it wasno fun waiting for a shower or hearing my grandmother snoring. But years later,when she finally moved out，I can tell you this. It gotquieter. It was less funny. We were still a family, but we were ... smaller.

So the economy may bedriving us more under one roof, and we may whine that our independence iswithering. But for centuries, kids, parents, grandparents and even great-grandparentshave been sharing space, and when it stopped, we began complaining about thecollapse of family

values.Maybe the economy，of all things，is offering us a small fix.