CSotD: Letting go
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I said before that the Danny-Goes-To-University theme at Between Friends was going to be a rich vein for Sandra Bell Lundy, and it is proving to be just that.
I also said then that she had set Kim up well, since Kim is not overly neurotic as a parent and so the issue can unfold on a level of normalcy.
"Normalcy" being a moving target. Perhaps I was whistling past the graveyard, or perhaps the neurotic parents are grabbing the spotlight, and probably it's a little of both, but letting your children go — not just to college but into the backyard unaccompanied — seems to be a radical proposal these days.
Last week I came across a posting on one of those parenting blogs or maybe it was a news site's advice column about the wrenching emotional distress of sending a child off to college, and my reaction was, once again, "What have we come to?"
It's weird and kind of creepy how cell phones and the Internet have kept parents and kids hyperconnected, but you can't blame it all on that.
There was a paradigm shift earlier, sometime between my high school graduation in the late 60s and the time my kids got out in the early 90s.
I saw our valedictorian at a reunion a few weeks ago and complimented him once more on his address at graduation, which consisted of his getting up, reciting the lyrics to "The Impossible Dream" and sitting back down again so we could get the hell out of there.
I hadn't wanted to be there at all. I had a distant summer job scheduled to start a few days earlier and had casually told my folks I'd have to miss graduation, to which they replied that I could be a few days late and I wasn't going to miss this important event.
And I'm glad they did. We had a terrific party afterwards.
By stark and I might add appalling contrast, the addresses at my kids' high school graduations — and they had expanded the student speeches to way more than two — consisted of kids weeping over how much they were going to miss the school, and their teachers, and each other.
American Indians can only wish that our (majority culture) forebears had been such a bunch of snivelers and stay-at-home pantywaists 400 years ago.
The "boomerang generation" is fodder for a lot of cartoonists and comedians, but the term is predicated on a false image. I think they should be called "the bungee-cord generation."
If you don't want them to keep coming back, cut the damn cord. And if you do want them to keep coming back, get some help.
And this is not simply an issue for spoiled middleclass suburban kids.
My older son reported that, when he got out of A-school second in his class, his fellow-sailors were jealous because he would be able to choose his own assignment, so he could pick Norfolk or San Diego and not get stuck having to go overseas.
He was a bit mystified by the idea that anyone would join the Navy in hopes of not having to go overseas. (He chose two years in Japan, which included visits to most of the Pacific Rim.)
He'll be sending a daughter off in another year, and she's already told me that she plans to radically prune her current list of Facebook friends to a sparse core of best-and-closest, so that she can start fresh and not be tethered to an image of who she is to a bunch of people she's known since she was six.
Good girl. You don't get a lot of chances to re-invent yourself, and you really need to take advantage of every single one.
Danny seems headed in the same direction, and his dad's envy is a very positive sign that the boy was raised right. Give'em roots and wings, and take pleasure in how well they can fly.
Kim knows it, too. She just needs to adjust a little.
Who knew you could get comedy out of a family that isn't dysfunctional?
Speaking of connection issues:
(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
You raised him, Alfred. You deal with it.
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