Generations: That Was Then, This Is Now

When I was a child, my mom mostly worried about protecting me from the scourge of polio and from worries about my dad, who was overseas in World War II. Her mother’s apprehensions had been about childhood diseases, such as mumps, measles and whooping cough, which could turn deadly. In my great-grandmother’s day, infant and mother survival in childbirth was a paramount concern. When I had my children, it was not so much disease or childbirth that I feared, but the culture of alcohol and drugs they would be exposed to as teens. Of course, then HIV came along to terrify us all.

Now my children, who successfully avoided the multiple snares and pitfalls I’d so dreaded while raising them, have children of theirown, and it’s their turn to steer through parenthood with all the luck and wisdom they can muster for the job.

We just recently welcomed grandchild No. 3 into the world, and during some of the wonderful hours of holding and rocking this tiny new human, I began to think about the very diff erent challenges my children face as parents.

To those who view cities as exciting dynamic places, my rocking chair view, where I sang, swayed and soothed my new granddaughter, would seem ideal. San Francisco stretched before us, and I tried to tell her about the sounds and lights I knew were now entering her freshly activated sensesand to explain the incredibly noisy activity of her older brother.

Sirens, traft c, street cleaners, recycling trucks, helicopters, airliners and distant voices in the streets reached our ears as we rocked. She would jerk and start at some of these intrusions, much louder now she’s out of her cocoon.

The effort of being born is exhausting, however, so a great deal of the time we spent together she “slept like a baby,” ignoring what I considered assaults on any semblance of peace. That is probably where we will always differ. She will be raised in this busy, loud city, and I will spend most of my time away from her either in our wooded surroundings or in our relatively saner (to me at least) smaller town.

Our locations are minor points in the overall scopeof what this little creature and her family will face in their lifetimes. Barring “the big one” shaking San Francisco apart, of course, making environmental problems moot to those living there, this coastal city may be moving even higher up its hills as global warming furnishes it and all the coastlines of the world with rising waterfronts. Some island nations may disappear completely, and millions of people worldwide will be displaced and hungry, their traditional food sources lost as the oceans rise.

As I rocked this new citizen, I thought about the dangers her ancestors faced.

Cures and vaccines have been discovered for many of the older killer diseases, and death for mothers and babies in childbirth is now rare. Wars eventually ended, or at least they did at onetime. Our nation now seems to be perpetually warring somewhere on the planet for reasons those who die in them are rarely privy to, nor do we any longer seem to question the real whys of our country’s engagements in conflicts. I therefore wonder what wars my grandchildren will experience and where.

Considering environmental changes, how will today’s parents find a way to explain to their grandchildren that polar bears, elephants, whales and hundreds of other creatures may not have gone extinct had we humans been willing to make some changes in our ways. What will they say when this next generation asks what “mountaintop removal” for coal was all about or why we squandered and poisoned precious fresh water to fracture the deep earth for energy while the sun shone down for free?

Will they have an explanation for the distortion of foods into genetically modifi ed unknowns by the time kids learn enough to ask?

And, what reaction will the nation’s children have when they find out we once had national parks and forests that were protected from resource raiding industries for private gain?

The hardest task of all will be how we adults, who could have prevented it, excuse the saturation of the globe in chemicals that alter the genetics in all living things including our own kids. Will we say we were stupid, lazy or just apathetic? What in heaven’s name are we going to tell our children?

FRAN ALEXANDER IS A FAYETTEVILLE RESIDENT WITH A LONGSTANDING INTEREST IN THE ENVIRONMENT AND AN OPINION ON ALMOST ANYTHING ELSE.