George,
Ruffled harmonies are nothing new within families with adolescents and, as I tried to say to CGB by way of comfort, are absolutely essential and healthy for the separation of the child from his parents. We encourage our boys to talk, express their opinions, their anger, their disappointments, but the one thing we refuse to tolerate is disrespect. Oh, make that two things--deceit is unacceptable. Those are the punishable by death offenses in our house. All else is treated as growth pretty much, which is not to say that it's pleasant or easy or that we're always very good at it. Only that that's our goal. I guess I don't agree that what we experience is anything alarming or particularly new to this generation. I am so very, very proud of my two sons-the men they are becoming, their values, their belief that they want to contribute to the world and have something to contribute, and I find the same characteristics in many of their friends- that I really don't have any feelings of despair about them at all.
I was very much a part of the 60s and while there was an innocence about much of it (at least in OUR memories!), it was also an incredibly self-centered generation and it is THAT generation that is raising THIS generation. These kids didn't create themselves--they are the product of the generation you seem to credit with such an altruistic and noble character. It is the parents of these kids that I believe are the true ME generation. It is easy to look back and think that we had these globally benevolent, Save the World goals but to our parents we appeared decadent, self-indulgent, selfish, disrespectful. Didn't they see us as "lesser", as "different", as "anarchistic", as "hedonistic"? And besides, we had really bad music--
We just got back from our yearly family odyssey to the woods of New Hampshire-a week we all treasure for different reasons- and we were driving from Boston to Alton in our little rental car when I found a station on the radio that was all 60s music. I knew it all, every word!--and I sang loudly and happily all the way up Route 93.
"Is this great music or WHAT!" I cried to the backseat.
Silence.
"Mom, do you really believe that?" asked CW, finally.
"Could you find some Mozart?" said Ammo, who is on a Requiem kick and can recite the Latin Requiem Mass from memory.
"You realize that every one of those songs is exactly the same--I, IV, V, and the words aren't exactly deep."
Ammo snickers-"I dunno--I got a lot out of Boombittyboomboomdowop dowop myself."
I am stunned. This music was my youth! All my hormones are wrapped up in those dowops. Sure, I had been training to be a concert pianist on one level, but my adolescence was taking place dancing to Twist and Shout and the Mashed Potato. Yes, I read Madame Bovary and War and Peace, but I also hid under the covers with a flashlight and devoured Peyton Place and Tight White Collar. What we adults are observing is the surface of this generation's development. Under that, invisible to us, is the truth---and I don't know yet what that will be. But I won't judge them by their movies or music or the rings in their noses.
By the way, Ammo hated Titanic, except for when the ship split in half and the scene with the naked woman. |
