Your children live such different lives than you.
Generations ago this wasn’t true. You lived the life your mother, and your grandmother, and probably your 5 times great grandmother lived. Change came slowly; your family situation was immutable to a large extent. You actually lived with a lot of those people.
Enter the 20th Century and the dislocation of tens of millions (hundreds of millions?) from the agrarian past. Without the connection to the land and the community, there was really no reason to try to live the life your father lived, and your grandfather’s and great grandfather’s life was now out of reach. Those on the land continued, perhaps, to follow their ancient traditions and lifestyles a few more generations into the modern world, but those in the cities couldn’t, wouldn’t, or didn’t need to. And the cities increasingly beckoned more and more people from the life on the farm, where the rhythms were becoming increasingly urban, or at least controlled by people whose rhythms were urban.
Suddenly there was this strange modern thing called “choice.”
But your children’s lives will also differ in more personal ways. My own family had broken down by the time I was my children’s ages. My mother was dead, my father immersed in an increasingly remote role that had no room for me. Wei’s mother remained (and remains) connected, but his elderly father died before my daughter was born.
My children retain strong bonds with us, and I can’t see that changing. It was something deliberate on my part. I feel very keenly how adrift Wei and I were as young adults, without the strong anchor of a stable existing home or parents and wanted my kids to know that we were always there for them. I watch my children struggle with relationships, jobs, and, frankly poverty, and am completely nonplussed about how Wei and I handled this. We just had to make it up; the “adults” in our lives were, for the most part, absent, or useless.
Their lives are very different from mine. My kids know that they can come home.
I so understand your post. So much I could share but no need to. My daughter has stayed close but because of divorce my son has not (his choice). I feel somewhat successful in that my daughter knows she is loved and has me to turn to no matter what. Like you said our children’s lives are different than ours. I think of the jobs that were available when I was younger. Not so for the young ones today. They must try and try again before hired. Until then they have us and after too of course. We all share our talents and what we have with each other. Life is good.
In the past you usually lived with your relatives or at least in the same street…distance wasn’t really an option and community was everything. My daughters live 50km away from us and my son is currently in New Zealand looking to apply for another visa for his Texan sweetie to stay in Australia for a bit longer till they can apply for permenant residency. Living on the other side of the world isn’t the same deal that it was last century (shall we say in the 1970′s?
). You can instantly keep in touch with your relatives where once, not so long ago to be honest, you waved goodbye to them tearfully knowing that you might never see them again and that sporadic contact might only be possible with the odd phonecall on birthdays and at Christmas time. There is a fundamental beauty in living on the fly. I, too, had a dearth of parental lessons. We lived with my mother who didn’t cope well with being the head of a household and who kept to herself and made sure that we had food on the table but was entirely unable to support us emotionally. I, too, had problems parenting and wanting to do the best for my children with no idea what “the best” was! I have recently discovered that science is pushing for parents not to smother their children. Children need time to work things out for themselves. If you grow up having to think on the fly, you grow up able to look after yourself and process life more openly and honestly. You tend to be able to face up to lifes problems and deal with them better than cossetted children who are protected from the world. A degree of restraint is apparently needed. We, too, made it up as we went along…I read to my kids… I tucked them in…I made them stay on the supermarket trolley and I ruled with a strict set of rules and my children also know where home is. Poverty is endemic Xan…its worldwide. A sense of hopelessness and despair keeps clouding our childrens physical future and yet what we have taught them is so very important to their wellbeing…humanity is resilient…we endure, and we do it well.
As always, your marvelous stream of consciousness posts made me smile AND wipe a little tear. And I just wanted you to know that I do read your wonderful blog and always mean to comment, but I’m generally exhausted by the time I get to the end of each journey (there’s no other way to describe your writing!) so I take a little nap, and then when I get back up I’ve forgotten! So thank you for always putting a little sugar in my day!
Lol! I am trying to condense my words down to their inner meaning but my 1000+ muses keep yelling in my ear and I get sidetracked
. Too many comments for me to answer are not my idea of an easy life so I am more than happy for my dear constant readers to read and nap (as I, indeed, tend to do especially with blogspot blogs where you have to jump through hoops to comment…easier not to 
). I love that someone out there likes our journeys and that our efforts to post aren’t wasted. That’s all I care about…communicating with strangers…a bit like “relying on the kindness of strangers” without the physical needy bit 
. If I ever get my lazy ass off this seat and go hunting for a hive I might be able to offer you a little Serendipity Farm home grown sweetener with that first cup of joe 