How hard it was to scrub a floor with elbow grease, how it was her chore as a child to wash the dishes and help her mother hang out the laundry with clothespins. Do children still have chores, she wondered? Her children had a maid service that came in to their homes, more often than not, to take care of such basic, seemingly trivial duties. They had well-stocked refrigerators and pantries with great boxes bought from Costco and new and shiny appliances.
Today, parents and children are seldom at home together. They are usually working and ferrying their children off to various afterschool activities like soccer and gymnastics. Children are not supposed to play in the streets, or walk to school. Dinner is takeout, often eaten on the run in the back of a large SUV. She didn't understand how people could have so many more modern conveniences to make life easier, yet constantly say that they were stressed out and had no time, not even to sit down to dinner occasionally.
Ah yes,...
Sunday dinner used to be a sacred event. The whole family would gather, often dressed particularly nicely, and have a real 'family style meal.' Now when people got together, it was usually only on holidays, it was such a rare event. And the children would get bored quickly and wander to a room to watch television -- if their parents hadn't gotten to the TV first! Heaven forbid people would have to talk to one another!
Of course, this isn't to say that there was no generational divide. Children still listened to loud music that made their parents suspicious when she was a girl. The children said that the older generation did not understand them, and the older generation said that kids wanted to grow up fast -- too fast. Looking back, things always seem better in retrospect. But given all of these general truths, it does seem as if something has been lost -- a greater sense of community and family and also a greater appreciation for some of the small pleasures life can bring.
