Caught in the Middle

In the life of a child, fourteen years is a big deal. It is the transition from toddlerhood to the brink of young adulthood, the morphing of a tiny, unruly, babbling thing into a person often beyond recognition, a person capable of intelligent conversation, a person who can share a knowing laugh at an off color joke. 

We revel in the process, the miraculous maturation of our children. When friends and relatives who have not seen them for long periods marvel at the changes, we are reminded that the days and years that can seem to move along at an evolutionary (and sometimes excruciating) pace are speeding by on fast forward. As the emptying of our nests draws closer, we anticipate it with an odd mix of eagerness and dread, and there is nothing like an annual holiday gathering to stir up the confusing brew. 

For about fourteen years, I have been in the middle generation, seated at the table with the other "neither here nor there" folks for what have become traditional holiday dinners at a friend's home. From the beginning, tsk tsks trickled down from our elders to us, and from us to our own children. Searches for guidance, at least at the beginning, trickled up the other way -- from our children to us, from us to our own parents. In our minds, I think, at the "neither here nor there" table, we remained unchanged as our children grew and our parents grew old. It was a comfortable place to be.

It is getting to be far less comfortable. In the life of a grandparent, as it turns out, fourteen years is a big deal as well. It is the transition from the palpable excitement and joy of a special time to the brink of old age. It is the morphing of an energetic and proud band of adults reveling in the lives and accomplishments of their children's children into people somewhat beyond recognition, tired, frail, a bit nutty, gradually incapacitated by the infirmities that go hand in hand with living long. People once capable of intelligent conversation seem suddenly on the verge of becoming unruly and babbling. The odd circle of mortality plays out before our very eyes. 

I exaggerate a bit, of course. The elders are still capable of conversation which, at least by the standards set by the rest of us -- which can be pretty low -- is intelligent and funny. And, knock on wood, the ones that were there at the beginning of our fourteen year ritual are all still there, and will be for a long while. The children still revert to some babbling and unruliness -- as do we, come to think of it -- but their number has dwindled. College and careers have kept many of them from joining our annual celebrations, and the dent in our group seems to become deeper and more irreparable each year. As for us at the "neither here nor there" table, well, we're enduring loss on both ends as we hang on to our chairs in that middle place for dear life. 

This morning I woke feeling a bit distraught about all this, weighed down by the swift and unstoppable passage of time. Maybe it was just too much brisket.