Like most children, I spent a lot of time trying to understand my parents. I grew up in the 1970s, and they seemed to worry a good deal. My father worried about potential job losses and recessions and gas prices. He worried about our safety and about people who seems inappropriately interested in his children. My mother worried about our educations and whether we were learning as much as we needed to. She never seemed happy, and at times, I think she was depressed. To me, this seemed silly. We lived in a rural community which became more suburban as I grew. The crime rate was low. Families bought new cars regularly. Most of us had a pretty decent annual vacation. Every parent I knew was happily employed, and if something went wrong, they found a new job within two weeks to a month. There were opportunities for everyone who wanted them, it seemed to me, and those who wished to attend colleges had their pick.
What I didn't understand at the time, was that my father had signed up for the Merchant Marine at 16, and had seen WWII from the standpoint of the ship delivering the supplies. My mother had been one of the children separated from her family and sent to live in the country when London was unmercifully bombed. She lost friends, family and loved ones. She literally did not see any family for a couple of years, and her life had not been easy. The war had taken much from them and had caused them to find one another later than they may have otherwise, and it had therefore caused them to have their children later than they otherwise may have had them.
I had not understood as a child and as a teen was that my parents had worked very hard to find the place and to craft the circumstances in which I had the luxury of living as I did and of judging them for being too concerned, and for not enjoying life as I thought they should.
God has both a sense of humor and a desire to answer some of the questions we once asked in our youth. As my own young adult children, my little grands, and my family navigate gas prices of $4.60 a gallon, and home prices higher than my kids had ever imagined, in an era where Russia invades Ukraine, and a demented fool occupies our White House, I understand my parents better. They knew turmoil and loss and even when it seemed over, they had the knowledge that difficult times could and likely would return again someday. My family stands now on the precipice of these really difficult times again.
So as you navigate these difficult times with so much skin in the game, remember that your grandparents, your parents, your children and your grandchildren have been trained by the times in which they lived in order to navigate them. Try to look on them with love rather than thinking them out of sync or perhaps behind the times. In a sense, we are experts at living in the times in which we now find ourselves.
