“Confused and Wanting It To Go Away.”

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The following text thread speaks for itself. My youngest, now 20, is staying with his grandparents for a couple of weeks before he flies to Maryland to help me move back to Texas. It began with me asking how things were going.


Son- Things are fine, time is moving pretty fast but it’s amazing how slow this year has felt. I feel like I can remember something about every week since early February. I’m not the only one who thinks this year resembles 1968 fairly closely.


Me-  I heard a historian on NPR today say that the recent events reminded him of 1968 also. The major difference, he said, is that this time people have time to get involved because they’re unemployed or on lockdown, out of school, etc.


Son-  I wouldn’t want to erase this period away, it’s been incredible to see. You no longer can claim “blah, blah we all got involved back in the day, none of you youngsters protest.” I’d be out there if I wan’t living out of my suitcases pinned between family members.


         I read a very interesting piece that sort of agreed with what I’ve felt about your view on the late 60s versus what was happening, similar to today. You see the Sixties through rose colored glasses because you weren’t really being plagued by the (racial) issues of the time. I think things like that are definitely changing.


Me-  The racial touch of the 60s . . . oh, yeah, I was affected. Personally more than societally.


Son- Yes, but you weren’t being hosed by police and attacked by dogs.


Me-  No, but I had my own very upsetting encounters that colored my views on race relations ever since. Good and bad, leaving me very confused and sometimes wanting it all to just go away. It was a chaotic time for everyone, even a young rebellious adolescent like me. Do you and your brother ever talk about these things? He and I never do; we talk about entirely different subjects. I really don’t know how he feels about all of this, although we talked at length last week about good cops/bad cops.


Son- Not really because we’ve sort of grown up only seeing minorities getting pummeled and inequalities getting worse, whereas people your age lived through a time when those problems were just sort of swept under the mat leaving people “confused and wanting it to go away.” So we don’t really discuss it because we just sort of know what’s definitely wrong. For example, we don’t think of the n-word even subconsciously.


Me-  And I do. And I not only hate myself for it, I still can’t think why it comes to my mind except that I heard it so often when I was growing up. Kind of like “g-dammit.” I know exactly where I heard that the most and why, sometime in my youth, I decided it was okay to let loose with it when I was frustrated. Grandma used to say it all the time, and I picked it up from her. There were others I heard from friends just as often— maybe more, like “mother-f—— — er” —but I never used them. Still don’t. Goes to  show we hang onto things we learn, good and bad, when we’re young. That’s one reason it was so important to me that we  took you and your brother to as many countries and states as we could when you were growing up.


Son- I don’t know, I guess at least for me, with the exceptions of maybe the mid-00s and later 10s, since we were born, culture and society have been pretty miserable and unfair to most people. We didn’t get that “ride the bike around the town with your friends and see a drive-in movie” experience because every other day it’s a new video of a black person getting shot, corrupt bankers collapsing markets and then doubling their wealth, or the rise of Karen culture. So this stuff is really refreshing to see.


Me- The 60s divided families as much as it divided our society. Part of the reason grandpa and I went at it all the time. It’s hard enough figuring out who and what you are when you’re a teenager, let alone where you fit in and where you’re going, but when you throw in all the insanity of war, assassinations, racial divides, and the entire counter-culture revolution, I don’t know  how I came out of that period as sane as I did. Dad fought me for years and didn’t start to appreciate my point of view until I was in college, and only grudgingly then.


     I always saw it as me against authority— someone trying to box me in and tell me how to think, how to behave: “sit down,  you’re rocking the boat” and never letting me be who I wanted to be. My takeaway from the 60s is that that’s what my heroes— the Doors, the Airplane, etc. —were trying to do. They were telling kids like me that it was okay to be yourself, to let your mind, your imagination, and your spirit run free. I saw the racism, the injustices in society, the senselessness of violence and war, so to avoid it I ran and hid in my fantasies of love and rock and roll and traveling. That’s why, when you ask me what I remember from, say, 1967, I can only recall a few national and world events, and not very clearly at that. It’s because I chose to run and hide with my girlfriend, my music, and my writing. To go someplace where I felt safe and happy.


Son- You haven’t changed or adapted in 50+ years!?!?



     The answer to “You haven’t changed or adapted in 50+ years!?!?” is yes, I’ve had to adapt and change. We all have. And yet, given the explosive events of the past couple of weeks, and worse, the oozing pus across the political spectrum that has revealed an infection in our country far deeper and sickening than even the most pessimistic among us imagined, I wonder if my generation- the Love generation -let go of the brass ring. 


     Maybe it’s this generation that will right the wrongs and set the train back on its tracks. God, I hope so.

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