94. For my grandchildren

I have six grandchildren, five of them between the ages of 16 and 23. Two of the five live with me now; the other three are in the Portland area, only one in that “hybrid” thing we still call high school. Two of the five are haltingly, fitfully, trying to go to college. 

 

For all of them, it is hard times. When I was 22, I left on the biggest adventure of my life, five years of living and learning in Turkey and visiting a dozen other countries from England to India. We didn’t worry about airport security, let alone facemasks and distancing. We ate from street vendors’ barbecues and dined in fine restaurants. I learned to love lamb, yogurt, and anise-flavored raki. It was a time of trying out the world.

 

My grandchildren now work—but don’t play much. They’re watchful of who they are with and how close they are, and, unlike some of their peers, don’t attend Covid parties. They don’t feel invincible, in part because one of them did contract Covid-19. Although he is recovered and super healthy now, there are times when he feels like he did “when,” and wonders if he is one of those with lingering side effects. At a time and ages when they should be playing, learning, tasting different foods with new friends, testing themselves in the world, they’re fearful of the new. 

 

Of course, a half century ago some of my peers were testing themselves in an entirely different way—in a war in far-off Vietnam. That war—and our hopes with President Kennedy and then the nightmare assassinations of Kennedy, Kennedy, and King--marked our generation. They brought young people together to protest, make music, and yes, explore drugs. 

 

Ours was a raucous testing of self against a rapidly changing and sometimes dramatic and traumatic world; we expressed our individualism in sharing music, drugs, and politics. My grandchildren live against a grinding, dull, limited world. They watch their steps and their breaths, reach out by phone and computer, looking for friendships and love in a world that has made dating an online commodity and “gaming” together a strange kind of long-distance—sometimes international!—friendship. 

 

And like us and their parents—our children—our grandchildren live under constant threats of heat and cold, wind and fire, and, of course, the pandemic itself. They hunker, like we all do, in small family and close friend pods, wanting to not be alone in the world. 

 

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