Today’s
Generational Divide
Father:
“It’s not time to make a change/ Just relax, take it easy/ You’re still young,
that’s your fault; there’s so much you have to know/ Find a girl, settle down/
If you want, you can marry/ Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy.
I
was once like you are now, and I know that it’s not easy/ to be calm when you’ve
found something going on/ But take your time, think a lot/ Why, think of everything
you’ve got/ for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
Son:
“How can I try to explain, cause when I do, he turns away again/ It’s always
been the same; same old story/ From the moment I could talk I was ordered to
listen/ Now, there’s a way, and I know that I have to go away/ I know I have to
go.
All
the times that I cried/ keeping all the things I knew inside. It’s hard, but it’s
harder to ignore it/ If they were right, I’d agree/ But it’s them they know not
me/ Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away/ I know I have to go.”
Islam
Jusuf/Cat Stevens “Father and Son” 1970
This
old Cat Stephens song has been playing in my head for days. I finally sat down
and read the lyrics all the way through. It depicts the age-old fracture
between the generations of a family—with the parents wanting the child to stay
the same, and the child wanting to grow. It’s almost always in the parents’
minds that their children will grow up to be like them; will embrace their
values and follow their lead in lifestyle. Sometimes—too often—when children
find their own direction, parents cannot understand it. How could they just walk
away when I have scraped and saved and sacrificed so that they can become
whatever they want to be? See the paradox in that? Whatever they want—except for that
thing they’ve chosen.
I get
it. It’s hard to watch your beloveds make choices you do not support.
Especially when they are choices you made as a youth that blew up in your face.
In the father’s lyrics, you can see that he expects the son to “find a girl,
settle down,” just assuming the boy will want a girl, and marriage, and
settling down. I mean, isn’t that what every red-blooded boy wants? No. Not necessarily.
And then layer over that assumption the discovery on the boy’s part that maybe
he doesn’t want a girl at all, maybe he wants another boy, or maybe he actually
wants to be a girl. I have spoken to trans-gender persons who knew from
a very early age that they were in the wrong body—sometimes, when gender isn’t
clear at birth, the parents choose whether this baby will be raised as a boy or
a girl. And sometimes, they choose wrong.
There
is so much wrangling in the news and in the state legislatures about gender being
one static thing—you are what you were born with. But what if you weren’t born
with an observable gender—between 4,000 and 5,000 babies are born every year in
America without identifiable gender. And now our legislatures are trying to
pass laws to deny this simple fact, and to force those children to be what their
laws dictate. “From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen.” No wonder we are driving our children away.
My
father told the story of when his younger brother got on a bus to go join the
Navy at the start of World War II, their mother climbed right on that bus and
tried to physically remove him. I also remember my own mother, when we began
wearing miniskirts to school saying, “Young lady, you are not going out of
this house with your ‘hiney’ showing!” Also, in my freshman year of college,
the frat boys took two long-haired freshmen, shaved their heads, and threw them
in the river. Fortunately, they could swim. Every age has its generational
divide, its ground war over lifestyle and life-choices. “Just relax, take it
easy…I was once like you are now and I know that it’s not easy…”
This is
today’s battle and it’s a painful one. Just know this—our children are people,
too. If we did a half-way-decent job of rearing them, we can trust them to make
their own decisions. And we know that we love them no matter which way they go.
And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? Love them, whoever they turn out to be.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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