parents, grandparents, generations

[Anonymous]

DW and I are both only children. Really. We have one daughter who is now 7, and were blessed by two more girls last fall. I'm 36 and she's 39, I think that no more kids are in our future. Biology, money, time, etc. DW's mom is an only child too. My own mom has a sister, who never had kids, both of our fathers are still alive but cousins there either don’t have children or are separated by space and generational time. DW maternal grandparents are still alive, age 91. Living independently and married, but getting right to that teetering point of "what's the next step?" I laugh and say that most people their age have been dead for 10-15 years!

My mom had a party Saturday and got back together for the first time in a long time seeing her sister (issues, nothing novel, they seem to have worked through) and a cousin of theirs from several states away. It was a really nice time to have the family together. We were there. Even some friends of theirs. Recently, maybe its having my own kids get bigger, and seeing our parents age, I have been doing more thinking about family stuff. I had this stark realization that "Hey, my own parents are the age my grandparents were when I was a kid (7-14 or whatever), my great grandparents (I had 2) are longgg dead, and my grandparents are gone as well." Duh, I know.

I think this might be because now I have a full generation of memories, i.e. my own daughter is about 7 and that’s really the age I can remember more clearly back to events and family functions and personalities etc. Now I think about my own dad when I was 7...he was the guy who seem to be able to do anything and everything, fix anything, the go-to person. He made life look so easy. Now my daughter probably thinks I'M that guy, and I'm thinking "no, wait, that’s not me, I'm still figuring all this crap out." And a second later I realize my dad probably felt the same way.

This is all just obvious stuff, there's nothing unique here. I understand my parents will die one day. Maybe, even with a family of my own, being an only-child comes out when I think about these topics. I feel like I'm reflecting a little more on what my own childhood was like in the last 2-3 years than I ever had before. I take and enjoy each day as it comes, try to plan for what I can, don’t spend my mind living in the past...the present is far preferable to me anyway, and know none of my thoughts are new or unique. But I still find myself thinking about families and generations and the past present and future, the fabric that connects us all though we are all living the core of ours lives at different times.

If there is a question here i guess it is...does anyone else ever ruminate on this stuff occasionally?

[Anonymous]

I think about this stuff all the time (my kids are now 11 and 9). All the time, OP!

One thing I would recommend, and that is to ask the older generation questions--my kids ask me stuff about their lives--really, basic stuff I should know "Did grandma have chickens?" and I don't know! My dad is dead so more than a few times I've been frustrated that I had adult years with him and never asked him something.

Anyways I don't do scrapbooking etc, but there is one thing I do for my own kids. I go to Pages (or MS Word) and have an intermittent journal that I keep for the kids. It's written to them, and it talks about what's going on in their lives right now, who is doing what, and also what's going on with me at the time. So why I've made various decisions (why I switched their schools, for example).

I might have an entry just like you have above--because, you are writing about how having the kids has affected your thinking about family. Now those interesting thoughts and musings of yours could just get swallowed up in the internet, or make it on to a more lasting document that your kids can read when they are in their 20s. So they will get the benefit of not just remembering when they were 7 and their dad was X, but they will get the insight of what was going on with you as well.

I keep it simple and don't stress about adding pictures or anything--the bar has to be very low for it to work.

This year I wrote something in January, then had a couple of entries in July. I've missed many events but the important thing is it's there to do periodically.

I've noticed as the kids have gotten older the content has changed some, because now they can remember things that happen to them, and especially with my oldest I'm discussing decisions and underlying motivations with them.

[Anonymous]

I'm an only child, and on one side I have no first cousins.

Both of my sets of grandparents faced infertility, so they were older than was typical when they became parents (but of course about the age I was when I had my son).

All this has been on my mind my whole life...that eventually it will just be me with memories of family life. It can be hard at times, but having a child has actually eased some of my anxiety and helped me slow down and appreciate moments rather than worry about the future. I do take a lot of photos.

[Anonymous]

OP here. That's a great idea. How do I make sure something like that doesn't get lost? That its available for them? We almost need to designate a place in the house... a safe, etc...for "stuff" that we dont ever want to get lost. I think writing that down would be the most useful one day, because if I"m fortunate enough to get really old, I'll never have remembered how I felt "back then". There seems to be a veil one passes through at different stages of life. It is hard to convey knowledge across it, because it changes us in some way.

Dad is 71, I wish I'd had something he had written when I was about 7. The most emotion he's really shown is once, when his own dad/mom were moving from their home to a Condo at a retirement castle (which becomes assisted living which becomes a nursing home room), anyway they were cleaning stuff out and Granddad just gave us this telescope he hand-built in 1970. Yeah, he built freaking telescopes. My dad shed exactly one tear on the way home in the car that night in 1998, remarking how it was something his father had built and cherished and now was ready to just "hand over".

Life is like walking down a dark hall carrying a candle. You can see 2 (or 3) generations behind/older than you, and you can see 2 (or 3!) generations in front of you in your old age if you are so fortunate, but beyond that in either direction it is dark and knowable really even in the best of circumstances. Has the digital revolution changed this any? 90 years from now, will my great grandkids be able to read some blog post I made...or will that end up no more permanent than a discarded letter that was sent in 1925?

Whats not lost on me at all is that I actually have the good fortune of two parents who are still around and doing well, not everyone does. Or does not have good relationships with their parents.

[Anonymous]

correction: meant to say "unknowable really"

[Anonymous]

My kids are the only kids on either side. It will be lonely for them when the rest of us are dead. But at least they will have each other.

It does make me sad that they won't have a large family like I did growing up (including cousins, I only have one sibling), but that's life I guess.