I am the youngest of three, four or eight children, depending on when you ask and how you count. My mother died 17 years ago and I still think of her every day. This means, that I have lived more years without her than I lived with her. And yet, she still has a profound impact upon my life.
This is what motherhood means.
It means that the seeds you plant will long outlive you, your body and your brain. It is a blessing and a challenge. I know that now, and I am only four months in.
So lately, I have been pondering American generations. Back in the '90s one of my older brothers introduced me to a book called Generations, in which the authors analyzed American History by classifying the overall characteristics of a generation of people who were born around and lived at the same period of time. Some critics loved the book, some academics hated it. As a child, I loved the book. My major concern is that it carried a very anglocentric view of America and American history.
Nonetheless, it encouraged me to think about generations, cultural and familial, and their impact upon an individual.
My grandparents' grandparents were born as slaves. As a child, I would always meet children (many white, though some black) who would say, "Slavery! That was so long ago! I wish people would stop talking about slavery! Get over it.". At first, I sort-of understood where they were coming from. Until I talked to my paternal grandmother and realize that she knew people in her lifetime that were born in bondage. And with that, slavery didn't seem too long ago.
I think history and identity are very important, in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. I don't think you can fully understand your own identity or fully choose to build an identity unless you attempt to tackle your history. So much of the present is built upon the past.
My children will be kids of the 21st Century. They will never be able to remember a world with out cell phones, personal computers or the internet. They will grow up, probably, expecting diversity.
I am a child of the Hip Hop Generation. My peers weren't the folks who created hip hop, we were just the first to grow up not able to remember or experience a time when it didn't exist. We are a post-civil rights generation benefiting from Affirmative Action. We are fighting to hang on to it. Some of our elders would say my generation has entitlement issues. This may be true. We, too, expect diversity. The women of Generation Y look at white males and say I want what they have. The people of color of Generation Y say, if I can earn it, I deserve it. Entiltement? Yes, perhaps.
My siblings are of Generation X. They are post-segregation babies, too... but, their peers built the hip hop world I grew up in. Some call this the Black Power era.
My mom was of the Civil Rights Generation. She came of age in the 60s. This means, that King, Kennedy and X were very real to her. (Real figures from memories, as opposed to historical figures read about in text books) She was probably the first woman in her family to earn a college degree, though men in her family had earned terminal degrees the generation before.
Both my grandmothers were of the pre-civil right generation. Some call this the Greatest Generation. Their husbands grew up during the Depression and the went to fight in World War II. Surviving both, they came home to raise their kids during industrialization. My maternal grandmother had a high school education and my paternal grandmother had a fourth grade education. Keep in mind, this was the segregated south, so children probably all learned together regardless of their age. And a fourth grade education meant that my paternal grandmother could write her first name. She was very, very proud of this. I remember her showing me this on a few occassions when I was young.
My great grandmothers were daughters of the segregated south. Women often married young and bore children at a young age since their weren't things like higher education and career aspiration to push family building back a few years.
My great-great grand parents were born during slavery. They were young at the closure of the civil war. I believe at least two of my sixteen were mixed. At least one great-great grand parent on my mother's side had a white father and black mother... and at least one great great grandparent on my father's side had the same. When I was younger, people used to say that there was native american in our family too. (But, if you talked to any Black person in the 90s they said they had Native blood. In many ways no one wanted to be, too Black.) So, I honestly don't know about any Native American...
For the generation before that... the generation that lived the majority of their life in American Slavery... I have no idea.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the generations of women in my family. How they raised children. What they found to be important. I spend a lot of time wondering about the not-so great times... and how they held the family together and raised children in spite of not having much money, much education. I reckon, there is a lot that they did have. The women had a lot of support. And perhaps that has made all the difference.
