Generations

It is the mark of our generation, you know, that yelling into a video camera is therapy, that narcissistic self-reflection has a website, that virtual clicks on a picture of a thumb determine your worth. So different from yesteryear, When white-washed fences marked the borders of Nirvana. At least, that was the illusion, but guests served dinner on the extravagant china never looked past the shined silver to see the skeletons in the closet. They never saw the dingy basement washroom where mother struggled with dirty laundry- trying to beat the filth out before hanging it on the line for the world to see – trying to clean the house in ways she could not clean up her life – planting flowers so no one looking in from the street could see her cry, see her wring her wash-weathered hands and mourn for her loveless marriage and her chauvinistic husband and her everyday oppression. But it’s okay. Because she lives in a perfect world, and she’s breathing in the good ol’ days as she’s mending the holes in her son’s jeans, sewing on patches like she wishes she could patch up herself. Just one. Stich. At a time. But now it’s present day, and toxic smoke has leeched her world of its bright, plastic colors: She’s grown old – her kids are gone and married off somewhere – and to her grandkids, “grandma” is a vague notion – just a dollar in the mail at Christmas and birthdays. A funny scent of butterscotch like candy left forgotten in pocket full of lint. They see only an old lady who rants about the world today, screaming of cultural corruption and social network sites that she doesn’t understand. Her grandkids just roll their eyes and slouch her off, Because Grandma doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get the pressure when the internet says you’re supposed to have friends collected and displayed on your wall like trophies, and we’re all assuming we have to be eternally happy because dislike isn’t an option – but life’s not even close to perfect. And you rant and rave to the faceless masses on the internet so they can watch you and tear you apart with their comments, but in real life you’ve been brushed off like the dirt which still lays heavily in the clothes everyone wears; everyone’s trying to get away from the soot-saturated cotton on their backs. We all wish we could peel the shirt off our bodies and be free of it, but then we’d be naked, and we’re all too ashamed of the self under the threads. So Grandma doesn’t know the pressure, they say. But she can see the dirty clothes we all wear – the clothes of a generation with a digital IV tearing up their arm. And it brings back the days of working in that basement washroom, scrubbing at cloth until her hands were raw and bleeding so her son could go to school with his head held high and his shirt pristine. Cause grandma can draw no parallels between this bulldozed age and her own idealized memories. She is a relic of her own definition – a left over novelty from a world where people did not have these problems. So she can impose her own exile behind the glass case in the living room, on display while she observes corruption from behind the clouded window, but age does not leave her untouched. She tarnishes like the rest of us, and each new complaint causes the paint to chip off her shoulders, revealing the grimy ceramic beneath. She’s breakable like the rest of us. And the bright colors she cloaked herself in were just a lie – the life she comes from is just as fragile. Just as dirty. And her excuses break like the mindset of the shattered 50’s, revealing the true reason for her stinging comments – Resentment. Resentment that her grandkids could escape the family ties which strangled her. That they could grow up to express themselves in ways she never could, and that their problems had an outlet, and for them it was socially acceptable to admit weakness. Her feelings are buried and steeped in deceit, engrained from years of sweeping problems under the rug out of sight. But can you blame her? It’s only natural – For the lie is just the mark of her generation.