One Thought on Gen X and the Generation Gap (Which Really Did Play a Major Part, I Think)

Current discussion: Learning to and letting yourself be creative and artistic.

I’m Generation X.

I tested out as Generation Y a few years ago because of my social media addiction, but I proudly identify with the X-ers. We grew up under Reagan and were heavily influenced by the 1980s. An excellent book, X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking by Jeff Gordinier confirms what I already knew: we first became visible to the world in 1991, during the ascent of Nirvana and the grunge music that would define us to our parents, the Boomer generation. They first “saw” us in 1991. It was our music that gave us away. Grunge was something the Boomers had never really seen before. Our philosophy of life scared them at first glance, even though we had been there right in front of them for awhile. It’s like the Boomers awakened to the stark reality of their children–in 1991. Children who were not content with how the Boomers had approached life. We weren’t Gen Y; we didn’t immediately start hollering and screaming. We were quieter, muted, until Kurt Cobain thrashed around his blond hair on stage and suddenly Boomer parents completely panicked and all hell broke loose.

That was 1991. That was the mood when I was “16 going on 17.” It was everywhere too, not just in my house. Every beleaguered Boomer parent was faced with a teenager whom he/she did not understand and who was not approaching life the way the Boomers as teenagers had approached life. The Boomers freaked out and rightfully so.

Each generation kinda loses it when their own kids decide to think differently than they do. In our ultra-post-modern world, we actually haven’t advanced very far. The Romans and Greek didn’t know what to do with their offspring either. The early Greeks sent their teenagers off as sacrifices to the gods. The Roman armies were full of teens pulled from their parents (or given by their parents) to save the country, the race, the heritage, and the traditions.

It’s always about two different worldviews colliding. It is not a pretty sight and has not been for thousands of years. But in 1991, a new phenomenon appeared as a solution. Parents could remove their kids from life, not by sacrifice or war, but by taking them underground. If by sequestering us, they could save us from a world gone mad, parents felt this a reasonable idea. Removing the world from us and removing us from the world. It’s how convents and monasteries are filled. It’s how our current military beefs up its numbers (I’m not knocking either; just pointing out the obvious). My family (along with countless others) thought this just might work, even if some of the more extremist ideas seemed unnecessary, and so we went.

The last thing I remember in 1991 before going underground was the music of Madonna, the gravelly voice of Michael Bolton, and some band called Nirvana that sang about teen spirit.

And then I disappeared for ten years.

Well, not actually. I was still living and breathing, living with my family (in an above-ground house), moving to the country to a “house on a hill” where we would attempt to be more country than rock and roll, raise chickens and rabbits, plant vegetable gardens and orchards, and where I could safely steer clear of the devastating influences (according to the Boomers) of the grunge rock movement, the evils of a world gone mad, and most importantly to my parents, the influence of anything that might make me “lose my faith.”

It wasn’t all bad, but we scurried quickly, like frightened peoples fleeing the revolution. When I think back to those days, I compare it to a civilian population retreating from the encroaching army determined to plunder. It was a fast descent. Within months, my life had been stripped of outside influences and my focus was inward–toward the family and toward the church.

All good, right? Sure, just in moderation. One cannot simply stick their head in the sand and expect to live life this way. It does not work. Sequestering a family in the country just to hide out from what looks scary and overwhelming was the wrong approach. Our family knows this now, and I think anyone who looks at us now would say it didn’t hurt us too badly. Remember, I experienced Patriarchy Lite.

I learned a lot in the country. I still love sun-warmed apples plucked from the tree just like those my sister-in-law handed me this past weekend from her orchard. I love the smell of harvest and the fields. I love the quiet, with only the occasional bird chirping sounding from the quiet of the valley. I love driving with the windows down in order to smell the different crops. I loved summer nights when our neighbor, an accomplished bagpiper, would play Scotland the Brave and Amazing Grace while marching up and down his mile-long driveway. The sound would rise up to us and for a second, if I squinted and gazed down toward the valley, I felt like I was in Scotland.

No one can take those wonderful moments out of the years we hid away. In the midst of the long years up on that hill, there was beauty. There was peace. There was much love and laughter. There was hilarity in the little moments that I will never forget. Our family came down off that hill a bit bruised, a bit disappointed, slightly disgusted with ourselves and our foolishness, but happy. And the friends from those hill years will be friends for life.

But I am done running. I am going to face it head on, as a survivor, patching together what I can find to make it through. And at the risk of becoming a broken record, especially to readers who really don’t agree with me, but by the grace of God, I would fail. I did not scramble out of our underground years on my own strength. I had help. Family, friends, and something inside of my heart that was stronger than even my desire to stay safe, to stay quiet. It was the desire to be human. It was the desire to prove God’s grace through living my life.

What is the grace of God if we don’t allow anything to hurt or touch us? What are we? If we believe in this grace, why are we so afraid to lean on it? Why do we shrink away from life’s unpleasantness in fear and trepidation? How wimpy is this grace anyway?

That’s what beat stronger inside of me. It still does. The 1950s missionary to the Auca Indians, Jim Elliot, said a few years before his murder, “Remember you are immortal until your work is done.” By hiding, I was not living like Elliot. But when you’re in the middle of it all, you don’t realize how you’re living.

However, in the rush of disappearing from the world, a few specific experiences turned what seemed noble into something tragically comic. I can look back and laugh now (because I’m back above ground), but not back then.

The first one happened in spring 1991, after school was out and our family prepared for our first trip to the nationwide ATIA conference (the annual brainwashing is what it really is). This was before we had moved up to the “house on the hill,” and before things really got started. As you may already know, one of the first rules of patriarchy is that women should not wear pants or attempt to appear masculine-like. With my wildly permed hair at 17, I hardly think looking masculine was a worry, but we were warned again and again by devotees to patriarchy to watch that we don’t wear clothes “unbecoming to a young woman.” As it happens, the worry was not so much that I’d appear like a boy, but that I’d “entrap” the boys with my wicked, wily ways.

Tagged as: grace, memoir, patriarchy