So right now my wife and daughter are en route to California. My son and I will be joining them on Friday. As adults we may be used to the jumble of our lives, being able to take trains, planes, or automobiles from this city to the next for a week, then back again, settling in for a day or two then hitting the road again. For children it's a difficult time. Young children like routine. They like to see the same things day after day. Stability in all things is beneficial to them: caregiver, mealtime, bedtime, home.
The strain of the past month and a half showed on my son's face this morning. As he ate breakfast he edged closer to me, until he was resting under my arm. He told me he missed Mommy. She'd been gone for about one hour. Since Thanksgiving, he's been in California and Pennsylvania as much as he's been in the District. It's hard to get back into a rhythm when you can't get settled.
But children are resilient. In the face of all this disruption, my son has begun to read. He started the week before winter break and has steadily recognized more words as the days have progressed. It would be nice if the only challenges children faced were the kind my son is facing: a temporary disruption due to family illness. So many children are left behind before they even get started: lack of access to schools and healthcare, lack of plain safe environments, the permanent disruption of living on the economic margins of society (whether in this country or another).
Last night we watched the PBS show Frontline: Country Boys. Set in eastern Kentucky, the filmmaker followed two boys for 3 years, from the age of 15 to 18. The challenges these two boys have faced far outweigh any obstacles I ever had to overcome in my life. They sometimes make the same dumb decisions that most teenagers make, but without the social safety net that many middle and upper class kids have to catch them; they also make the same incisive comments that many teenagers make, showing at times a deep understanding of their situations. This side of America rarely gets an airing: 90210, The OC, Laguna Beach, Saved by the Bell, etc. do not come near the lives that these boys live.
The series continues tonight and tomorrow night on PBS.
5 comments:
I am sorry your family is having a difficult time these days. Life on its own terms, right?
Take care, okay?
For the record, the teen-pleaser shows you mentioned are the reason I don't watch TV.
Save travels to you all.
I didn't see this show, but I fret over the problems it represents in terms of young people whose lives fall through the cracks where in a different economic bracket it would be a minor glitch on the radar of life. In Great Britain it's set up if you don't know where you're going at 14 or so, you're sunk. You don't have the luxury of staying in high school without the grades, and the next thing you know you are wearing a navy duster jacket and scrubbing floors at Woolworth's. American television glosses over the fact that there is a huge portion of the population with their noses pressed to the screens, wanting those things, being told they should have those things, and being clueless how to get those things; it's so far removed from their existence. You can go to bad sections of D.C. and see it as well, with the expensive clothing and cars and nothing to back it up but the repo man waiting in the wings, and yet how can you fault them for wanting what this culture promises them is everyone's right? This growing gulch between the haves and haves nots bothers me...can you tell?
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