intergenerational acceptance
when my wife was growing up her family used to hide their VCR everytime Grandma came up the drive. VCRs were an unreasonably extravagant luxury; she would not have approved at all.
my grandmother sent me a letter the first time she saw in a picture that I had grown a ponytail. She wrote: "So and So asked, 'does Andy have a ponytail?' I said no, that must be some shrubbery." My cousins referred to my ponytail as shrubbery ever since. My Grandfather slipped a little handwritten clip of paper into the same envelope. He wasn't the writing sort; as far as I knew the last letters he had written were to his mother when he was in the military in WW II. The clip of paper read:
"1 Corinthians 11:14 - Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?"
That's all. No personal note. No context. Judgement had been rendered and imparted.
It seems like a telling anecdote because it condenses all that I wonder and fear about growing old....
My father in law once told my wife that her mother thought I was drinking too much. (we were in France -- where its actually a sin if you *don't* drink too much).
A different day, my father suggested that perhaps i shouldn't tell my mother about my drinking.
(and for the uninitiated, this is *not* a drinking problem -- this is a divergence from the fundamentalist position of teetotalling...)
and last night i was feeling sad about having to monitor myself when talking to my Grandmother. I know that this is a universal practice -- code-switching for Grandma's, but there comes a point where you just think -- at what point along the playing of a part, the monitoring of selves, the secrets that underlie relationships -- do you cease to really know one another?
it's a seam that i'm endlessly curious about -- and not in a dispassionate way?
It makes me feel sad, I said to Lynn as I turned out the headboard light. That's its such a fact of existence. Isn't there anyone anywhere who can just love across difference? who can know fully and still love completely?
It seems least possible, least likely across generations --
is this what *keeps* generational chasms wide? even after the aesthetic differences of adolescence and the battles surrounding of coming of age have faded from importance...?
~?
my grandmother sent me a letter the first time she saw in a picture that I had grown a ponytail. She wrote: "So and So asked, 'does Andy have a ponytail?' I said no, that must be some shrubbery." My cousins referred to my ponytail as shrubbery ever since. My Grandfather slipped a little handwritten clip of paper into the same envelope. He wasn't the writing sort; as far as I knew the last letters he had written were to his mother when he was in the military in WW II. The clip of paper read:
"1 Corinthians 11:14 - Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?"
That's all. No personal note. No context. Judgement had been rendered and imparted.
It seems like a telling anecdote because it condenses all that I wonder and fear about growing old....
My father in law once told my wife that her mother thought I was drinking too much. (we were in France -- where its actually a sin if you *don't* drink too much).
A different day, my father suggested that perhaps i shouldn't tell my mother about my drinking.
(and for the uninitiated, this is *not* a drinking problem -- this is a divergence from the fundamentalist position of teetotalling...)
and last night i was feeling sad about having to monitor myself when talking to my Grandmother. I know that this is a universal practice -- code-switching for Grandma's, but there comes a point where you just think -- at what point along the playing of a part, the monitoring of selves, the secrets that underlie relationships -- do you cease to really know one another?
it's a seam that i'm endlessly curious about -- and not in a dispassionate way?
It makes me feel sad, I said to Lynn as I turned out the headboard light. That's its such a fact of existence. Isn't there anyone anywhere who can just love across difference? who can know fully and still love completely?
It seems least possible, least likely across generations --
is this what *keeps* generational chasms wide? even after the aesthetic differences of adolescence and the battles surrounding of coming of age have faded from importance...?
~?
posted by Redbaerd at 8:10 AM
<< Home