KIDS THESE DAYS
When your grown child is the one doing the coaxing, and you’re the one who’s not so sure.
In Ray Bradbury’s dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes, the scares manifest through a malicious traveling carnival but originate in the fears and desires of its human victims. The protagonist, a middle-aged father named Charles Halloway, agonizes over the reality of his stage in life; at fifty-four, he has less time on the earth than more. As an older dad, he regrets that he can’t experience fatherhood with the same energy as a younger man and deeply misses his own boyhood. The carnival senses these insecurities and preys upon Charles by offering him youth. But in his wisdom, Charles resists and finally accepts himself as he is, validated by the acceptance of his son, Will. Will also encourages his dad to ignore the trappings of his age and join him in youthful rituals such as sneaking in the house through the bedroom window and running in the night for the sole rush of movement. Charles hesitates but ultimately gives in to Will’s encouragement, and his joy is what finally smashes the carnival.
At fifty-four, I can relate to Charles. My kids are a full decade older than Will, but I feel my age each time a set of stairs taunts my knees or my husband and I go on a date to get a dose of the shingles vaccine. I’m healthy, eat well, and exercise daily, but that didn’t stop an employee at a local grocery store from saying, “That’s about what I thought” after asking me how old I was. The exchange was weird, random, and…humbling. No matter how well we take care of ourselves, at some point age comes for us all.
Like Charles, I have kids who love and accept me. Unlike Charles, I am not too bothered by getting older. My main worry as someone in later middle age is feeling like I missed out on opportunities that now seem reserved for the young. There’s a scene in the novel where Charles discovers a matching set of rungs that Will and his next-door-neighbor, Jim, have affixed to their homes and concealed with ivy. The rungs allow the boys to sneak in and out of their rooms and explore the night at whim. When he finds the rungs, Charles is not mad but envious, wishing he could climb in and out of his responsibilities undetected and unneeded. Will notices his father smiling at the rungs and urges his dad to give them a go. The fifty-four-year-old balks, feeling that such pursuits are behind him. Will insists, and Charles follows his son through the window. The two share a moment that bridges their generations with shared experience.
We parents are accustomed to encouraging our children to be brave, try new ventures, not care what others think, and test the boundaries of what they believe is possible. However, it’s a new encounter when your child is the one doing the coaxing and you’re the one who’s not so sure. A few months ago my middle daughter, 23, and I were at a music show for a band I had recently discovered. She had gotten tickets for us, but like Charles, I balked; the show was on a school night, and I can’t function without sleep like I used to. I went anyway.
When we arrived at the venue I was clearly the oldest person there. I felt a little dumb when my daughter introduced me to people she knew, thinking of the guy from the grocery store. But the show started and I was swept into the music. Just one song into the set, my daughter poked me in the side and pointed to a girl who was crowd surfing a few feet away from us.
“Mom, that’s you.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“No, really. You want to go up?”
I looked at her with sheer panic.
Of course I didn’t want to go up. Was she insane?
Yet everywhere around us, arms and legs were coasting by on the hands of strangers, people riding the music on nothing but the trust of others. I started thinking of how it would feel to float above the crowd with the reverberations of the music moving me along. But I was way past the point of even considering something like that. Plus, I would be the old mom intruding in the young people’s fun. But…
Of course I wanted to go up. Was I insane?
“Okayyyyy…”
My daughter tapped the shoulder of a guy standing in front of us. She pointed at me, and the guy held his arms out and lifted my torso while another guy pushed up my legs. And then I was off, soaring and bobbing and feeling—what was it? Young? Not really. Free? Yes, that was it. Free! Because I no longer had to wonder what it was like. Because I didn’t worry how I looked. Because I knew no one would drop me. Because even if I did get dropped, I would just get up. Because there was really nothing to lose. But mostly because I did it.
Within seconds I had made it to the front and was lifted over the barricade. I stood before the stage and smiled like an idiot before security showed me where to walk. I found my way back to my daughter and asked her if she wanted a turn.
“Not tonight. That was for you.”
Like Will, she could see my smile and sense the searing nostalgia within me. She didn’t want me to go home with disappointment. She wanted to be the impetus of my joy that night.
So together, we smashed the darkness of fear and regret.
