Snowflakes …

That’s what someone called the children of today. 

Snowflakes. 

As in delicate, fragile, unique, and precious. 

How apt, I thought. 

All you need do is see how many parents today treat their children. Like snowflakes.  

Mine were more detached and aloof. They would never think to be my pal or best friend; that would be ridiculous. My sister and I were their children, for whom they had traditional obligations – such as keeping us fed, clothed, in school and out of jail – until we left their care.

That was marked when we went away to college. When we packed up and moved out to college they never expected us to return, except perhaps for holidays or when summoned by them.  We never expected to return, either. 

Which was good, because when we left our room was promptly converted into something else.  It became the guest room; as in, you don’t live here anymore and if you ever return you’ll be considered a temporary guest.  With the emphasis on temporary. 

All our stuff we left behind was packed away in boxes and shoved into storage, awaiting a time when they could ship it all back to us. They hoped that would be soon.   

That sounds cold.  It wasn’t. They had fulfilled their traditional obligations. Their work was done.  We, in turn, had pretty much fulfilled our traditional obligations as well. 

We had grown up without causing them a lot of grief.  We never did anything to “make them lose the house.”  We never caused them to “be afraid to show our faces ever again.”  In short, we didn’t get the preacher’s daughter pregnant, burn down the school, crash their car into a bus stop full of crippled kids, get arrested for shoplifting, or commit a murder.   

We weren’t perfect kids by any measure.  We just didn’t do stuff our parents paid much attention to: if it didn’t have a high probability of publicly embarrassing them, they weren’t all that interested.  They had their own lives to attend to. 

And honestly, they had a lot of fun without us.  Maybe it was just their generation.  Maybe it was because they’d been raised during the Depression and came of age in WWII.  But I can tell you, they made up for lost time whenever they could. 

They drank, they smoked, they had and went to parties it seemed all the time. Especially when we moved from Miami to a little town in Northern New Jersey.  We moved into a neighborhood full of kids about my age, parents all about the same age – late 30s and early 40s – and all with about the same middle-class household incomes from jobs in New York City and its suburbs.  

So they all had a lot in common.  And they all liked to have fun, which – from a kid’s perspective – usually involved drinking, smoking, dancing and telling off-color jokes with punch lines that made the men roar with laughter and the women feign embarrassment.   

They were a rowdy crowd.  I remember one night during winter – and in the middle of a raucous party – they all decided to go sledding down one of the biggest hills in our neighborhood. So they bundled up, grabbed all their kids’ sleds and off they went.  A bunch of otherwise respectable, responsible adults, hammered, and flying down the hill like 10-year-olds.

Another night during a party a kid home alone thought he’d heard a noise outside and called. The men interrupted their drinking, bravely grabbed up golf clubs and set off to investigate.  One of the few cop cars in town happened by and, seeing this group of men weaving down the street holding golf clubs, the cop pulled up and asked what they were doing.  Without missing a beat, somebody got into a golf stance and told the officer they planned to play a few rounds. 

The cop shook his head and drove off. 

The parents in our neighborhood never needed an excuse for a party.  Somebody would be outside holding a drink and before you knew it, there was a party.  It wasn’t that they were alcoholics, they just enjoyed a party. They were simply 30-somethings having a good time. 

Candidly, by the time my generation, their children, hit our late 30s and early 40s, we didn’t party the way they did at the same age. We worried more about our health and fitness and counting calories, while they were simply trying to perfect  the Manhattan, Old Fashioned, or Side Car and finding new ways of using Lipton Onion Soup to create ever more interesting dips.

They had a better time.      

They didn’t neglect their kids while doing this; they raised us as their parents had raised them.  At arm’s length.  What adults did was adult stuff. There were different rules for kids. 

Kids were expected to do well in school, be respectful to their elders, get a menial job like delivering papers or babysitting to learn the value of work and money, and not cause trouble that might embarrass their parents.  

Aside from that, we were pretty much on our own.  We did all the usual kid stuff – smoked cigarettes lifted from our parents, performed hare-brained stunts on a dare, rode our bikes bare-headed just about everywhere at all hours, camped out in the back yard, played tackle football year round without any protective gear, climbed and fell out of trees, turned over yellow jacket nests, and performed ill-conceived experiments involving toxic household chemicals. 

In short, we were just kids.  We got bruises, cuts, burns, insect bites, bee stings, scars, and every now and then a trip to the doctor to get shots and stiches for some stupid thing we’d done.  We dropped food on the ground and picked it up and ate it. We plucked grass and put it in our mouth. We ate wild berries we found without washing them first. We let dogs lick us on the lips. We had no problem drinking from a public water fountain, a garden hose, each other’s canteens, or sharing the same bottle or can of soda with our friends. 

We lived on PBJs, bologna sandwiches, Kraft American Cheese, Velveeta, Cheez-its, Nutty Buddys, Popsicles, whole milk, cookies, hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, tater tots, Swanson’s TV dinners and chicken pot pies, canned vegetables, canned ravioli and Chef Boyardee spaghetti, sugary cereals, Honey Buns, and Wonder bread.  We rarely met a processed or frozen food we didn’t like. 

Surprisingly, we survived.   

Despite our reckless disregard for germs, bacteria, GMOs, trans fats, lard, cholesterol, food additives, artificial preservatives, sugar content, and basic rules of personal safety, we made it. 

Our parents didn’t feel the need to protect us from any of this. Nor did they think they were somehow responsible for keeping us entertained.  We had TV, we had the great outdoors, and we had enough interests of our own to keep us occupied, mainly outside the house.

The only time our parents actively participated in our entertainment was when we went on a family vacation, or when they took us to the movies.  Aside from those events, we kids were pretty much entertaining ourselves, relatively unsupervised by adults except for the ever watchful eyes of our neighbors. 

If one of us got hurt, some neighbor would be the first responder until our parents arrived on scene.  If one of us was seen doing something amazingly stupid and probably hazardous to life and limb, some neighbor would intervene with the implied threat of telling our parents. 

There was no need for lawyers. No need for special counselors. 

And as far as I can remember, no kid was on a drug regimen except for a neighbor who carried a woofer for his asthma, and a kid down the block who took insulin for his diabetes. 

We knew not to let the diabetic kid have candy and we knew to run and get his parents if the other kid had an asthma attack. We all got antibiotics when we had a bad infection, but that was about it; our parents never considered medicating us to improve our performance in school, or sports, or to deal with life’s routine disappointments. 

All we wanted as kids was to be like all the other kids. That’s what our parents wanted, too.  Our parents would never try to intimidate teachers or school boards to make an exception for us.  We would have been horrified and humiliated if they did. 

We didn’t need our parents to protect us from every little thing, every hurt, and every unpleasant thing in our lives. When someone broke our adolescent hearts, they knew we’d get over it.  When we didn’t make the team, they didn’t intervene; we’d either work harder or get over it. When we lost a school election they never demanded a recount.  When we felt down or had trouble keeping up in school, which happens at some time with all kids, they never considered medicating away our problems with powerful pharmaceuticals.      

Yes there were music lessons if we showed an interest and a modicum of talent.  But they didn’t unilaterally enroll us in soccer camps, lacrosse schools, karate classes, or other things in a desperate attempt to fill our every waking hour with some activity that could prove useful down the road on some college admissions form.      

Truth is, they were pretty busy themselves being adults. They came when we asked – to our concerts, our school plays, our recitals, and our graduations – and probably many times to other events we were in without telling us so as not to embarrass us.

They wanted us to be independent, or at least feel like we were.  So most of the time, they let us be.  They allowed us to take the falls, the bumps, and the disappointments that came along.  And we turned out okay, for the most part.

We weren’t delicate, fragile snowflakes to them.  We were kids, as they had been once, remarkably durable and surprisingly resilient and adaptable to change. 

More like cactus than snowflakes. We’d grow up just fine.  

Life is generally good, or life is generally bad …

Years ago I came to the conclusion that at some time in everyone’s life they make a conscious or unconscious decision that life is generally good, or life generally sucks. That decision shapes how they see everything for the rest of their lives; it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like me, you know people in both camps.

I’ve known a man for many years who is the epitome of the former. He’s probably 96 or 97 years old now. He’s a former Eastern Airlines pilot later tapped to train other Eastern pilots.

He is relentlessly upbeat. When he was 95 I asked him his secret. He said that every day he is constantly amazed by all the new technology, all the advances in science, everything new, in other words. Every one of his days is a bonus to him, and he savors every moment.

It’s fascinating to talk to him. He doesn’t dwell on the past; instead, he’s focused on what’s going on now and down the road – science, space exploration, technology, politics, whatever. He enjoys Skyping on his computer with his kids, their kids and grandkids wherever they are in the world, but looks forward to whatever will be next – maybe Skype with holographic images, he once said.      

There’s always a bounce in his step, a firm handshake, a quick smile for everyone. It’s hard to accept that he’s in his late 90s. He still dotes on his wife of more than 70 years, he loves his kids, and has a rich social life where he lives. He’s a joy to be around.    

He considers himself very fortunate. You might be thinking he’s just lucky; some people just lead charmed lives. 

Let me correct that impression: his wife, the love of his life, has Alzheimer’s. If you have any first-hand experience with that disease – as my family has – you know how tough that is. 

She’s been declining for years. She only has bad days and not-as-bad days anymore. But he is always by her side, taking her in her wheelchair to church, to dinner, to wherever she wants to go, encouraging her, comforting her, and caring for her every need.

He knows what the future holds for her. That might break other people. Yet he’s determined to do the best for her while she’s still here. Even though they live in an assisted-care facility with ready access to an Alzheimer’s wing, he takes care of her in their own apartment. He told me he’ll do that until he is no longer physically able to care for her. 

He is one of the kindest, most thoughtful and most inspiring men I’ve ever met. And also one of the most consistently cheerful and upbeat. 

I believe he decided long ago that life was generally good.  And so, despite all the trouble he’s seen in his long years, and the current situation with his wife, he still believes it has been. 

So for him it still is.        

Now you also know people from the “life-generally-sucks” camp.  

I’m not talking about the folks with clinical depression or those with lives filled with very real physical and mental pain and suffering.  It would be easy for them to conclude life generally sucks, and for them, in many cases, it does.  Yet, surprisingly, many of them have an enhanced appreciation for the small pleasures of life a lot of us take for granted too often, like my former-pilot friend. 

No, I’m referring to those people you know who should be happy for what they have but aren’t. In fact they will never be happy. Ever.

They focus on the cloud surrounding every silver lining. The half-full glass. The darkness that precedes the dawn. They have bad relationships because they expect every relationship to turn out badly – it’s just a matter of time. Every job they’ve had was doomed to failure, because they expected to fail. Their bosses have always had it in for them; their co-workers were standoffish and cold; the deck has always been stacked against them. 

So their decision that life sucks became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more they believed it sucked, the more it did because they made it suck.  And so on. 

They may not have made that decision consciously, but it doesn’t matter. They have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

Every time something positive happens to them, they will anticipate something awful to balance it out. Every time they make a friend, or enter a relationship, they will obsessively look for signs that portend a bad end with only heartbreak and pain to come. 

And so, they will get what they expect. 

As do the people who believe life is generally good.