Can I be my grampa for my own kid?
One might be inclined to think that the way we learned about life as kids can’t be repeated. But is that so?
I had my grampa. Over the years, we talked a lot about all the inventions and changes of this century, changes he’d lived through. We talked about his life on the horse-run farm. We talked about TV and its evils, about the evil booze, about communism and Armigeddon, about revival meetings and crusades. We argued. We never got anywhere. He never changed a lick. We watched airplanes together. He mentioned old harvesting machines when we drove by them and how much help they were. But how nice it was to work with horses, too, to walk behind them. He wondered why the old barns weren’t being used. Why people weren’t trimming the dead limbs off their trees. But that’s all gone now. Right?
Maybe not.
The important thing is the marvel. The appreciation of what we have and where it comes from. As opposed to the blindness of its counterpart: a person who has no reference to the old-fashioned.
I can still tell my boy how it was. He’ll still benefit from knowing about ‘used to be’ compared with now, even if it’s just from my own youth. But maybe I should feel free to go back even further. Isn’t it just about roots and practical principles? What is there to rest on? Shouldn’t I still be able to be my grampa for my own kid? Maybe I should even live out these old things for my kid. Live like someone who has lived with aqueducts and the Erie Canal. Someone who grows things. Someone who worked a month to pay for their good family Bible. Someone who saw the elevator invented, who saw downtowns in their prime. Who saw them disappear. Who saw computers arise. Be someone who looks at an airplane and thinks a bit about saving time, but chooses to take the bus instead. Someone who lives from necessity instead of want. Be the stranger to this day who hard times have helped put wants, likes and fun in their place. Just keep fixing that old rake. Whittle a new broomhandle. Know lots of old songs. What a waste of time! Be oblivious to what people think-wearing a good hat should be enough to have anyone think as well enough about you as they should. Who would need to make any better impression?
Make my kid mad by saying No to things. By having the nerve to be someone who has perspective, who demands that things pay their way, who has a feel for the cost of the change, the price paid. Be one who has no idea about killing time or being bored. Be this instead of a victim. -Of things, of the times. Teach him about the nature of change with all my daily puttering and our little errands together and my stories. Show him how to perhaps detect the good parts of change. How to hesitate before paying a price that someone has only told you (even with all scientific proof) is fair. Because I have lived through the Great Depression.
Sure, he may well learn about fundamental principles anyway. He’ll hear about them, he could read any old book. But as his grampa (and his dad), shouldn’t I be the living proof of how one lives from unchanging principles instead of living from the times? To show him how not changing feels. To give him that stress, that shock, that resentment, that strength. He’s going to question the day and age anyway. Teach him how to use it instead of just rebelling. Just keep living from need instead of want. Show him how to pick and choose from the times, rather than feel obliged to take it all on face value, as it comes to him…conditioned, manipulated, ready to buy, willing to take your life in trade.
Show him that there’s nothing so new as the old-fashioned.
But maybe the role of the grampa is to be at a remove. Maybe if I represent oldness to my kid, he’ll feel too immersed in it. Maybe distance is important. Like how I’m closest to my grampa now that he’s dead.
