I have written before about the fact that I have started a game that I call Family Hashtag. Every day my immediate family members post a hashtag and a word or a phrase that reflects the kind of day that they are having, to a family chat. It is my sneaky way to get comfort in the fact that they are all alive and breathing and still interested in connecting with the family unit. We have quite a streak going now, of not missing a day when we all have posted to the chat. My daughter posted this the other day:
#Let’sGetThisBread
My sons immediately connected with it and they knew exactly what she was talking about. As it seems to be the way of things these days, I had to “look it up” for my husband and I to get caught up on the knowledge. Apparently it has become quite a popular meme in the last week or so. It means (from a good source on the internet):
The term itself is nothing new – it’s just a sort of encouragement to work hard and get the rewards that the work brings.
I had the feeling that’s what it might mean but I didn’t want to use it in the wrong sense and embarrass myself and my family (it’s happened before). Apparently, I’m not the only person in my generation who was a tad confused. I read that when one man got the same “Let’s Get This Bread” text from his son, he offered to stop at Costco after work to buy a loaf.
This is such a weird stage of life when you feel like you are straddling two cultural entities. One of my feet is sitting comfortably in the nostalgia and familiarity of my slightly outdated tastes in music, manners and the comfort of rooms in my house that reluctantly need to be updated. The other foot feels like it needs to step forward and stay relevant and interested and connected with the things that are striking a chord in my children and the members of their generation. Sometimes I look at my dogs wistfully and think, “Damn, it would be a lot easier to be a dog.”
We are getting quotes on updating a bathroom in our home that is very retro 1980s style. We’re not sure whether to hang on long enough knowing that it very soon may turn into a valuable antique relic room that we could offer tours and charge money to see it. Recently, while shopping, I saw a game called “90s Nostalgia Game”. I thought to myself, “Wow, if we are starting to get nostalgic for the 90s, that can only mean everything that I have from the 1970s and 1980s has to be museum quality.”
Anyway, we have been gathering quotes. The first man who came out to give us a quote on updating our bathroom was the age that I am starting to see in a lot of authority figures around town, like police officers and teachers and store managers. He was probably about 30, just slightly older than my kids. He looked aghast when he saw the bathroom he had to work with and essentially gave me the idea that we would probably just have to blow up that entire corner of our home. The second lady to come out to look at our bathroom was my around my age. I was drinking a Green Vibrance Smoothie and we connected over that, comparing how much flax seed we both add to our smoothies these days. When she looked at our bathroom, I think we both got a little misty-eyed. I thought she might put her arm around me and we would bond over the overdone, yet strangely charming opulence of the 1980s. I honestly liked and connected to both of these designers very much. I think they both had very interesting ideas and points of view.
Perhaps it is a blessing to be in this stage of life where you have to expand and grow to be able to communicate and relate with your children and younger colleagues, yet you are still able to relate to the older generations and to retain an appreciation for the footing that they have provided. Perhaps this time of life is actually the most expansive we’ll ever be. If you look at a horseshoe curve, the middle part is the big bend. It is pulled in two directions, so it is the longest stretch. The middle part of the horseshoe curve has the biggest curve in it. It must be like the seasoned branches of a tree that are able to be bent, but they are green enough so they don’t break. Branches like this are old enough and long enough to be bowed, but still have enough vitality and youthfulness in them to not be too old, and brittle, and stuck; to just break and splinter and disintegrate. Today, I consider myself a blessed, curved branch in this Tree of Life.