Y’all, it’s rough out there for everyone. The one thing I miss about March 2020 was when everyone was congratulating everyone on just existing during this trying time. The reality is that it’s been a trying time since 2001 and then since 2016 that has consistently been sliding more toward dystopian by the second.
The young folks have slipped into a Dada-esque sense of humor and general mood because the world is on fire and no one in charge of anything seems brave enough to do the hard things. The historian in me likens it to the mood of the young folks post-World War I. The Lost Generation. This is America. It has been zero days since our last mass shooting.
I am tired. I am at a loss as to how to raise my children and guide my adult child in a world where he and his teenage brother know that they could very well be gunned down or attacked at any moment just for being out in public, at school, or at work. Thank all that is good in this world our 6-year-old hasn’t put those pieces together yet. The world is still shiny and fun and exciting with so much to see and do and learn.
It broke my heart when my boys went through the transition from pure childhood to the inkling of awareness of what kind of hellscape we are living in. My eldest was in middle school, probably around 2010. My middle boy was unfortunately much younger. He grew up in a different world than my eldest. My youngest, I am in tears just thinking of it.
Having been a mom in now 4 different decades, I can tell you firsthand how much things have changed as a parent and as a kid. My eldest was born before 9/11. Before a 2 decade quagmire of a War on Terror. When there was still a federal ban on assault-style weapons. Before the 24-hour news cycle really took off in earnest.
I was young and being a parent was hard but a joy. Helping a child discover the world and themselves is a gift. 9/11 happened. Everyone talks about acting like it is 9/12 but on 9/12 is when Islamophobia kicked into high gear. I kicked a man out of a Perkins I managed that Fall for harassing one of my servers for being a terrorist whore. I was 22. She was barely out of high school.
She was Indian and had never lived anywhere but here. People were attacked, and people were killed. The idea that the country came together for a little while is bullshit. We just collectively identified a new “enemy.” We went to war.
Our middle child was born in 2007. A different world. A housing and economic crisis the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the Great Depression. Could the Glass-Steagal Act have mitigated that or prevented it altogether if it hadn’t been repealed? The joy of parenting was tempered by a fear our parents had never even considered. Active shooter drills were the norm from a young age.
The War on Terror was still being fought with no end in sight. Newtown happened in 2012. I knew when nothing happened after that, we had sold our souls. Our leaders were bought and sold by lobbies, per Citizens United vs. FEC in 2010 corporations are people now and can fund politicians and campaigns. There was no going back after that.
How could we, how do we continue to look the kids in the face and send them to school and out into the world and pretend that it is okay? It’s not. It hasn’t been for a long time. Talking heads and party leadership on the right keep going farther and farther right, calling people who are barely left of center left-wing extremists along the way.
Commies, socialists, all we want is safe schools, and clean water. Flint, Michigan hasn’t had clean water since April 2014. In the words of the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut, “And so it goes.”
Our daughter, our youngest and last child, was born in 2017. We had a blizzard that year that started the day she was born. It was Snowpocalypse. The summers are so much hotter here now than even when my eldest was young. It isn’t safe to live here without having air conditioning in the summer anymore.
Since then there has been a pandemic, a shutdown, a housing crisis to the point that the number of unhoused neighbors in our area has exploded, and an insurrection that didn’t even phase my sons because of course that happened after the shitshow that was the 2020 election. My eldest had graduated and gone to college and moved back home. I worry about him all the time.
College is so expensive he is worried about spending a bunch of money on a degree he can’t use or has to do a master’s program to utilize and spend even more money or worse yet hate his field of study and have to change majors. He’s not sure what he wants to do with his life yet. Fair enough, at that time he was 20. Jobs in my area that a 20-year-old can afford to live in are hard to find. Housing prices and rent are astronomically priced.
He is stubborn. He is my fighter, my scrapper. He has done things we were told would never be possible. He deserves a better young adulthood than this.
My middle son develops anxiety and agoraphobia. How can I blame him? I try to shield him from my worries but he isn’t stupid. He knows what’s going on out there. He is whip-smart, very self-aware, hilarious, and sensitive. He and his friends are such good, thoughtful kids. They all deserve a better teenage experience than this.
In the meantime, I have a little one. She is learning about herself and the world around her. It is still beautiful and full of promise and hope and love. I don’t know how much longer it will stay that way but we do our best. Her brothers love and protect her fiercely. And so it goes.
