Hubs and I have definitely had a few hectic weeks. Between the chaos of the vehicles, the insanity of his job (I used to say career, but I feel more and more that is a very old fashioned term that doesn't fit what is happening in this world today), helping our girls, and just plain living. Well, it's been chaotic. One minute is rushing, the next is waiting. One is spent longing for more hours in the day to finish something we enjoy, the next is spent in a bubble of disgust at how long the torture will last.
The weather didn't help much either, like I said, it's been hectic. It's been intense. And oddly for me a bit therapeutic. The air in my car is being persnickety again. So I haven't been doing much of the driving as Mother Nature is once again reminding us that it is summer in the Midwest and it is going to be completely miserable, no matter what we think. I kind of giggle when folks start in about climate change and how insanely hot it is, only to have a memory pop up on social media from a decade or more back talking about the same miserable temperatures and humidity.
Dang our memories get shorter every day.
We've been helping our girl out with a few projects that have meant a lot of traveling and doing things. Hubs has been driving. It's not that I can't drive the truck, I definitely can, I'm just short, it isn't sized great for me. Therefore, I have slid back into the time where he drove and I do some type of needlework while we travel about. While I work on projects I rarely gravitate towards my phone, I don't surf, I don't waste time playing mindless games. I might pick it up because something has bounced into my mind that I want to look at or research for a moment, but it is rare that it lasts long. I'm far too focused on my projects. Even now, while I take a short break, I am longing to pick up my needles and get that last 2.5 inches done so I can start the waist band of the beautiful sweater.
I've been lost in thought. That is the beauty of knitting a basic stitch, your mind can wander, your thoughts are allowed to roam. And, boy oh boy have mine been roaming, if they had a passport, I am fairly sure I would need additional pages.
I've daydreamed about future and unfinished projects. About plans to get them finished and or started. I've wandered through the catalogs of ideas in my mind, I've made mental to do lists and added new hopes and dreams to the piles. I've questioned whether we live long enough to chase all those dreams and when do we decide to prune the list. Or do we ever? Do we just jump in with both feet and live life to it's absolute fullest?
Mostly, I've been exploring why I do some of the "crazy and old fashioned" things that I do. Ya know, things like carefully washing and preparing organic grapes to make my sweet Hubs raisins. Or churning butter, definitely the new way thank you Kitchen Aid! Or maybe it's the yogurt that is always in some stage of being made in our home. Maybe's it's making quilts or knitting sweaters. And don't forget the garden or Hubs and I installing his new bumper, even if install was easy enough that I was simply needed to hold it steady while he tightened the nuts and bolts.
Why don't I go the easy route? Why am I not okay with the basic stuff from the store. Why am I obsessed with living a very different life? And I am obsessed. I don't fit in the boxes that the world seems to want us in. I'm not a neat and tidy soul. I'm chaotic on a good day. On a bad... well... lets pretend those don't happen.
I thrive on challenges, on thinking things through and coming up with solutions, ideas, hopes, yeah you get where this is going don't you? I know, I am lost in the wrong generation. This time frame isn't mine, never has been.
There is a path to where these thoughts are heading, believe it or not. Back when I worked in a non-profit one of the biggest questions is what is there of my middle age group kids. Those kiddo's that were too old for day care and too young for adulthood (although this age seems to be getting older and older - something I find terrifying). We struggled through many conversations, many brain storming sessions, never really finding a solution.
Fast forward to the past few weeks. The news has been filled with preteen and teen chaos (and definitely NOT the good kind). Those lost ages seem to be getting more and more intent on filling their own time, in their own way and nothing good is coming out of it. Businesses destroyed, property damage, masses of out of control youngsters that haven't learned about consequences or ever really faced them. Heck I woke up to reading about two 16 year old - I struggle to call them kids when they can do what they did, that targeted and murdered 5 people, just across the river. All just looking for something to absorb their energy, to kill the boredom they are facing and most importantly to be accepted by their peers. Other young people that are just as lost and out of useful ideas are guiding the masses.
Heaven help us all!
I often feel my generation started the snowball rolling at warp speed and none of us have stepped back long enough to see the entire situation as a whole. My generation was when mom's left the home en-mass to take up roles outside the home. The need for a second income seemed greater than the need for family stability. Society was telling women that they were being treated like second class citizens, not having the same value and worth as a man, because they were trapped in their homes.
Gen Xers started being the first full latchkey generation. Do they still use that word? Latchkey? Or is it just a sense of normalcy now for kids to take care of themselves?
Women traded their roles as the CEO of the home for a cubicle somewhere in the name of progress. They started splitting themselves and home became the part time job stuck in around the real "job". Women started chasing careers and the most important career ever, that of homemaker, parent, and CEO of the family took a backseat.
Family mealtimes, chores, learning about life and holding kids responsible became less important. Who wants to always be fussing at their kids to raise them right, when they only have a few scattered moments at the end of the day and on weekends to be with them?
In my world this is a seriously deep topic. One that a few years back I would not have agreed with. It wasn't until I stepped back from it, that I realized how truly damaging it has been. Families have been shattered by governments and society. The very things we trusted.
I think conversations with my now almost 20 year old grand-daughter have been the most enlightening for me. Her lens is powerful in many ways. My daughter was blessed by fate to be able to be a very engaged parent. She is home with them, no one else raised them. Are they perfect? Heck no, is any person? I rest my case. But her babies know their safest place in the world is with mom. It doesn't matter what storms have come their way, and there have been many, they are a unit. Nothing rocks that family, at least not long term, maybe for a mere moment. Even their brothers grew up knowing love and faithfulness. That the momma of the family was the rock, the glue that held it all together.
So many kids today are literally acting out to get mom and dad's attention. They need that stability, they need to know that they matter more than a paycheck. I sit back and observe what is going on, the kids, the moms, the dads, the way life is tossing and turning. Shoot even grandparents have been programmed to not have a role in the stability that is needed.
My grand-daughter pointed out to me that when I was her age I was already a mom. That by 20, I had lived on my own in another country, had been responsible for my own life, decisions and surviving it all. She seemed in awe. I thought it was normal. As we spoke, I realized with a clarity that semi-scared me, that there is no way on this planet that my precious grand was prepared for any of that. The schools, families and society as a whole aren't teaching them or providing space for them to learn those skills. They've spent too much time drifting. Too much time being taught to be a cog in the wheel. Something that most of us naturally rebel against, even if we don't realize it.
If you talk to my sweet Hubs, his memories revolve around helping his dad with the horses that were their stock and trade. He was only a preteen when he spent a summer basically living in the barn taking care of the horses during the summer. Today, that would be considered abuse, back then it was normal. It was a rite of passage into adulthood. He was learning skills, he was learning a trade. He cherishes those memories. They shaped who he is today.
I remember being 10 and feeling ashamed that my neighbor a sweet Greek girl named Maria the same age as I was, had already filled her hope chest with beautiful linen's that she had stitched herself. She was so much more accomplished in homemaking skills because that was the culture. It was expected to know how to do all of those things and more by a very young age. It wasn't abuse, or neglect, it was love. Loving your child and focusing your energy into passing on knowledge they would need to be a strong human in life. I spent hours desperately trying to figure it out, her momma in frustration ended up taking the piece back and finishing it herself.
Decades later, that still stings. I still try so hard to learn everything I can, because of that moment in time. Almost 51 years later, I remember the sting. The tears of failure and the feeling of being less than.
Is that where our kids are now? Are they drifting along? Are they struggling to get from point A to point B, because the road map is washed out in critical areas? The skills aren't being taught, is it because they weren't learned in the generations before? How many kids today are responsible for a horse, or preparing meals, or making breads, or helping in the garden? Can they make their own clothing? Prepare a home? Heck plan a budget?
Is that where we started this slippery slope that we seem to be on? Sure they can learn to code. I admit I hate that phrase more than anything. Not everyone fits that world. What are we doing, giving, teaching that is burning their natural energy? How many of them are hiking, spending time in nature, fishing, hunting (if that is your thing), if the grocery stores we rely on vanished tomorrow could they forage? I saw a sign the other day that I want to make for my garden... "Every plant is edible... ONCE!"
How many realize what it takes to bring meals to the table? Earn money? Where are the youngsters mowing lawns because that is what is expected of them. That they do things that contribute to the family and society as a whole. If they were busy being productive how much of the chaos would disappear? Where are the young Einstein's and Edison's? Are the next generation of Wright Brothers being encouraged and motivated to go further than the generation before? I am fairly sure I wrote about the young boys down the hill a few weeks ago that were developing their own transportation from a skateboard, lawn-chair and various bits of wood. That is what we need to be encouraging. Feeding that creative and inquiring nature.
When did we stop with the mindset, that if they want to go to the movies, mall, store - whatever - they earn the dollars to go? They sure aren't mowing yards, shoveling snow, raking leaves, having lemonade stands, babysitting, dog walking... whatever earned them a few spending dollars. Things that gave us a purpose as we were growing up, our children shun. It's beneath them. And the few that do, want to retire on a few hours of work so you better be prepared to pay up if you want their help.
And what about kids helping seniors in their area? Does that occur? Or are they just looking for the next good time?
Maybe the answer was never what could we provide to keep them busy so much as what is the expectation of what they could learn and do as they grew into adults. With responsibilities, there isn't time for chaos and destruction.
When you have worked hard, you don't want what you have put your everything into to be ruined and destroyed. Years ago, when I first moved here I volunteered for a playground build. I was in charge of a group on inner city kids and teaching them how to build the benches for the playground. Talk about stressful, thank goodness the boards were pre-cut - I definitely wasn't up for teaching them to safely use saws. There were more stripped screws than I could count, they had to learn to take them out and start over. It was hot, we were in direct sun and it was all a bit overwhelming for kids that had never tried to build anything before. After a long 8 hours 3 big wooden benches had been built. I gave them sharpies to sign their names on the underside. Kind of like a secret, no one else knew they'd signed, but they did. They were so proud of their work. I've long since lost the picture of those smiling faces, the look of pride and satisfaction only lives in my memory. Oh yeah, and the fact that several decades later those benches still sit untouched by damage, because they were proud of their work.
Have we failed generations of kids? Is it too late? I personally do not think it's too late. Sadly, I don't really think it is going to be an easy transition. Yet, I am hopeful. I see a younger generation, I've given up trying to figure out what they are called at this point, the one my youngest grand daughter is in, that is pushing to change that.
The ones shoving away the electronics. The ones helping with chores, soaking up life skills like an all you can eat buffet. I don't think it's too late. I do wonder if we are willing to tough love them enough to make it out the other side in one piece. And for that matter tough love ourselves. We lost skills, we lost ideals, hopes and dreams while chasing the easy way. We have to be willing to push back.
This morning there is an interesting smell wafting out of the kitchen, it's a combination of beef fat in the process of becoming tallow and kale chips that just finished dehydrating. My beloved Kitchen Aid is sitting on the counter silent at the moment, waiting for the parts to tune her up. Evidently that is something that I should have been doing regularly, I didn't know that, but the black oil pouring out of her last night taught me a new lesson. By tomorrow she will be fine, technology has a place, but it isn't a replacement.
The freeze dryer is loaded with a combination of soups for my daughter in law and vegetables that are getting a second life because I realized there is no way I was going to be able to use the bounty of the garden before it went bad. And shortly I will be chopping up some bread to dehydrate it and save for stuffing at a later date.
Yesterday, as Hubs returned to work after vacation, I thoroughly cleaned the house and caught up on chores. I've already picked most of today's harvest and tended the garden. Now it's back to learning a new knitting stitch series to make my sweet Hubs elbow patches on his sweater.
I want to teach others, so badly. I don't want to see these precious skills drift off into nothing. We become bored, complacent machines when we don't exercise our brains and bodies. When we quite growing and learning we become nothing... At least that is how my brain works. Now if I could just figure out how...
much love,
b
