I'm a grandma now, but I remember being 19 years old, in college. One pay phone serviced our residence hall of about 30 girls. Most calls were made in the evenings -- calls to and from home, to and from boyfriends, scheduling appointments. There were no computers per se, no email, no internet, no cell phones. If there was communication between me and my parents hundreds of miles away, it happened with snail mail letters (which I never wrote) or paying for a phone call in the hallway with girls squealing around me. That didn't happen often either.
This was normal, and we thought nothing of it. Somehow we still knew if major events or trips happened. Otherwise, we got on with our lives apart from each other. I traveled in Europe for 6 months after college and barely corresponded with my folks at home.
Now, our grown children are assailed with phone calls, emails, text messages, Facebook messages, video chats, Instagram reels, and who knows what other subtle means of messaging from us. There's hardly any privacy for the average 30 year old being scolded by society for not being independent enough.
I've pondered lately about parent and grown-child relationships. They seem fraught for many of my friends these days. Is it in part because they can't seem to get away from us. I sometimes worry that I'm an emotional slave to my grown children, desperate for contact, panicked if I don't hear from them every week. My parents didn't do that! They were content, as far as I knew, to send me off into the blue yonder and hear from me a few months later, if that. On a postcard, that probably said, "Yes, I'm alive." Did they worry? Maybe. Did they let me know? No. When did we become so dependent?
Any thoughts, you ladies (or gentlemen) of my generation?
3 comments:
I think we're more involved with our grown children now. We worry about them more than our parents worried about us. My Mom did worry about us when we packed up our barely 2 year old and a 4 month old baby and moved 1500 miles away. I wrote as often as I could and called occasionally but phone calls were costly then. She, and my Dad, had to accept the way it was. Of course they still had 2 at home. That probably helped.
I did not communicate with my parents for months at a time, after I went off to college. And then after marriage, the same pattern continued. They did have my younger siblings around. Sometimes I wondered why they didn't pay more attention to us, to my husband and our growing family. But then I made a friend whose mother was very clingy, and gave her daughter stamped postcards to mail to her. And that made me think I'd rather be ignored than hovered over.
My in-laws had fewer children, and my mil was a worrier. She worried if she didn't hear from us, and she worried about being a pest if she phoned us. But we always appreciated both sets of parents/grandparents, as they were. All of them had their own lives that were full, without us.
I am not really "a phone person" but I am trying to make more phone calls to my grandchildren. It's still more likely that they will receive a letter than a phone call from me, and that not very often! I guess I'm not emotionally dependent on my children, much as I love to be with them when that works out.
Oh my goodness. You echo my current thoughts exactly. No wisdom here, though. Unfortunately. 😬
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