To the Men of that Generation

How are you? I hope you are well, the message reads. My mom officially texts now, which to me, is still weird. I know the strangeness is self-imposed. Every parent I know has swapped depth for convenience. Why should I hold my mom to a different standard? The world has changed and so must I.

I call back. “We were just thinking about you,” she says. She always says this, but I know it can’t possibly be true. We speak for a few minutes about her travels, what it’s like to be home, and how my elderly aunt is feeling. If I call while they’re away, she puts me on speaker phone as one parent summons the other. “John! Nicholas is on the phone!” The pressure is on. The audience of two makes me wish I had new things to say, or at least more creative ways of rehashing the old.

I’m torn. My folks are home, which is rare. I want to see them, but I’m worried they’re not taking the pandemic as seriously as they should. I’m hearing this kind of thing from a lot friends around the country. Intelligent, educated, and worldly septuagenarians are telling they’re now middle-aged children “I have to live my life,” or “You worry too much.” And though my folks aren’t holding giant placards that read “Fake Virus” and are actually quite good about wearing their masks, I fear their “bubble” is not as discriminate or small as it ought to be. But you can only do so much.

I stop by the house and decide to keep my mask on. My dad sits on the sofa, watching football as my mom tends to the garden. (She’s always in the garden.) I know it won’t be long before my frail aunt finds out I’m home. She’ll go to war with those pesky steps slowly rising from her room to say hello to her nephew. I take a seat as my dad inches closer and lowers the volume of the game. I study the etched lines on his face and loose strands of what hair remains wondering when he got so old.

We talk like many fathers and sons covering weather, sports, and travel. Our conversation sounds like a summary of the Sunday Times. I ask questions, driving our talk like most men with baby boomer fathers. Lengthy stillness between words is not uncommon and even preferred over small talk. There’s an aging breed of men out there who only speak when they have something worth saying.

As a boy, I remember my father driving me up to a friend’s cabin for the weekend. After several minutes, my dad could take the silence no more asking my nine-year old self, “Jesus, Nick! Don’t you have anything to say?!” Even as a child the onus was on me to speak, to connect — to reach for his blinded hand. Looking back, I harbor no resentment. Instead, I feel compassion for the men of a generation that wanted desperately to connect with their children, sons especially, but were never given the tools.

I want to tell my dad I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I stare blankly at the ceiling thinking about time, how it’s running out, and that it feels like there’s still so much to say. I wonder if he thought the day would come when his son would be older than he was when he had me — a time filled with landlines, VHS, and big hair. I’m curious if he knows that when I close my eyes I can still hear the cracking of his knees when he carried his sleeping child to his room, or smell the after shave from when he said goodbye before shuffling off to work.

There’s a photo I often think of. It’s one of him with his hair intact, his socks pulled above his shins, his arms clutched around my brother and I. I wonder if he knows those boys adored him, that their love for him was only eclipsed by their fear of him. Does he remember telling me I needed to be the man of the house while he spent weeks abroad leaving behind a woman still navigating the language and customs of a strange country? There’s so much I want to ask.

I long for his youth more than mine, clinging to the romanticism of a simpler time. I remember how silence wasn’t something to be feared, or boredom something to be fled. It was a time when children played free of screens, tablets, or days scheduled within an inch of their lives. Where the glow of street lamps meant it was time to return home.

Doesn’t it seem like another life ago? I want to ask. Isn’t it unfair how we just ran out of time?

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