When my mother still walked upon the earth, she had a sign posted on her living room: YOU CAN! She had written it on a piece of cardboard, using big characters and placing it where she could read it every day. Sometimes, she would even touch it with her hand as she passed by, the way you might caress a pet. Or a child.
I saw the note and I saw her touching it, but I never asked her about it. I assumed that the origin of the sign was a self-motivational impulse and I let it go at that.
She is no longer around, at least on our physical realm and I regret not having started that conversation.
Actually, I regret not having started conversations with many other people, friends or relatives —or even total strangers— when the opportunity has presented itself.
Especially when there is a chance for an inter-generational exchange.
In a self-absorbed society, we tend to err on the side of aloofness. Too busy with our own thoughts, we “let go” of exchanges that may never cross our paths again.
We all lose.
I also think that the people we hear the least might be the ones standing right next to us. Perhaps we take for granted that they will always be there?
Now living in my seventies, I gratefully realize that I still have a lot to learn. A lot to live. The body aches, the steps are slower, we tend to be more selective and less impulsive. Our hair has become totally grey, or it has totally disappeared. Yet, we are evolving, continuously changing. If health cooperates, we still wish to stay vibrant, valid, current, competitive.
The new generations share those wishes. They naturally (it comes with the territory) consider themselves vibrant and current and are fighting for validation.
In the confluence of the old and the new currents, conflict might occur. The veteran might say that “it’s groovy to have an organization called “Youth Speaks,” but they should also have one called “Youth Listens!”
To that, the young might respond, “Who’d want to listen to your old stuff? We’ve seen and heard enough from you all, geezers!”
We need better communication between the young and the not-so young. It will inform our present decisions and help us open our future paths.
A few years ago (noted in an earlier column) when my son Roque was in middle school, he asked my mother about her life and ancestry. She wrote back a long and informative letter, filled with amazing revelations. Details that would most likely have gone unshared if those questions had not been asked.
For example, although my maternal great-grandmother Margarita lived with us a few years, I never really knew her. Details about her life had not been shared.
She was a rather stoic figure, extremely religious, who spent long hours tending the garden, always wearing long-sleeved white shirts and a severe brown skirt that reached down to her ankles.
In my mother’s letters, I finally heard more details about my great-grandmother and her “campesino” roots. Her parents had been illiterate peasants. When my grandmother Tránsito (quite a name!) was born and eventually became an elementary school teacher, she then taught her mother to read.
Tránsito was the first teacher in our family. That started a tradition. My mother became a teacher, two of my sisters and myself followed that path and now two of my children are also teachers.
In that letter, I also learned that, when basketball first arrived in Chile, in the early 1900’s, my grandmother Tránsito, being the tallest in her class, played the role of…the basketball hoop! She stood there, as tall as possible, her hands in front of her, forming a circle that would serve for her smaller classmates to practice that new sport. A few years later, when my mother was a young woman, she became a member of the female Chilean basketball team.
Again, I would not have learned that story if my son had not asked my mother about our ancestors and if she had not taken the time to respond.
While planning these notes, today I read an interesting interview by Tony Bravo. (SF Chronicle, Datebook section, 4/14/2021). It was a conversation with the African American painter Richard Mayhew, who is 97 years young. Some of Mayhew’s works are at the SFMOMA.
Reading about Mayhew helped me to finish this article. I learned that he still paints (and sings) every day and that his work is always inspired by his ancestry, a mix of Black and Native American (his grandmother was Shinnecock).
Mayhew also said that “…the painting is only a process for the development of the next painting…[a painting] never reaches a conclusion because it can go on to a continuation of the idea.”
In reference to what I am writing, it makes me think, what if we replace “painting” with “person”?
We all are a process, a process that evolves, a process that will be helped or impeded by the degree of communication that we establish with our children, our students, with each other…or with our ancestors.
Transcendence requires communication.