THE YOUNGER GENERATION

            As I nudge my 80^th year, the phrase “The Younger Generation” suggests anyone from birth through the 6^th decade.  Nonetheless, most folks of my age group consider “The Younger Generation,” to reference those between 15 and 30.  Also common among my peers is a disappointing sigh as the “Senior Citizens” express ideas about this “Younger Generation.”  Sitting next to me on a lawn chair on the Maui beach last month, one woman in my peer group complained, “They never write thank-you notes.”  She continued with a story of her gift to a young woman who works in her condo back home, a twenty-something to whom she gave $100 at Christmas.  “I had to ask her if she received the money,” the woman complained. “And I told her that had she written a thank-you note I wouldn’t have to ask her.” 

            Other complaints about the younger generation include their proclivity for social media, screen time, texting … anything computer related.  Granted, our generation readily turns to our grandchildren to help us Google or upgrade our O.S. (even explain what O.S. is.)  What would we have them do to please us?  Trash their cell phones?  Walk a mile to the library to check out The Hardy Boys?  If a time machine could spin us backwards, would our sixteen-year-old selves be different?  I remember begging my folks for a twenty-foot phone cord so I could snake the line from the front hallway and through my bedroom door where I could then hop up on my bed and chat for an hour or more with friends whom I may have seen an hour ago at school.  Where was my attention?  Certainly not on my parents, least of all my grandparents.

            This weekend, we are at our cottage with our twenty-two-year-old grandson who is making a short film for a class he is taking in college.  Home for spring break, he has only two days to shoot the film that he sets at our cottage with my husband and me as the two actors.  In ensuing days, he will add the sound and edit what might be a five-to-twenty-minute movie. 

            Within minutes of unpacking our weekend groceries, my grandson and my husband had fetched a ladder to ascend to the outside dormer window and drape a tarp over it to black out natural light from the loft bedroom where much of the film’s action occurs.  Chairs, tables, lamps have been moved to suggest separate rooms at distinct times of day and night.

             “Walk consciously”, I tell myself, as I maneuver around tripods holding up lighting flaps with yellow to blue bubs.  I have changed clothes (costumes) several times from nightgown to housedress depending on what scene comes next.  We have moved from walking along East Quilcene Road to throwing mashed potatoes in the compost pile.  Between shots, my grandson races between camera and laptop to judge how the shots will work for color, mood, tone etc.  I have long since given up on what or why he does what he does when turning a lens or adjusting a light.  I do not understand what he sees on the computer or how he coordinates his knowledge of filming to succeed. Around 10:00 PM, my husband and I fall asleep, but my grandson stays awake in his bedroom examining what he has shot thus far, staging in models or on paper what he intends for the next day.  It is not until morning that I check my texts to find one from him: “Nana you were awesome in the dinner scene. “

            Today, my character is acting sleeplessness as her husband character stays up for hours tuning the piano.   My grandson coaches, “It is all through the eyes, Nana.  Don’t move.  Look to my left, at the ceiling.  Yes perfect.  This is all mental rage, no acting.  It will show through your eyes.” He is seeing us through the lens of his camera.  I am watching him through the lens of my love for him since he was an infant who peed on me when I first changed his diapers. 

            I am hearing him.  He is telling me how to act.  He instructs me with all the authority of a movie director.  He is “The Younger Generation,” and about these things, he has much more knowledge than I do.

            At this moment, my husband is acting as the piano tuner in the film.  He hits the same note repeatedly.  From the loft, my grandson’s voice: “Nice job, Grandpa.  That’s sweet!”