I have hope for America's next Great Generation

I dropped the crystal pitcher into the trash. The pain in my heart mirrored the crack in the pitcher that ran from its elegant handle to the base. My mother had gifted us the crystal pitcher and its matching glassware shortly after my husband and I married. The broken pitcher sat on our kitchen counter for almost a week before I could throw it away. I kept it in plain sight, a metaphor for the new normal of the pandemic, where the legacy of the past remains beautiful, fragile and no longer useful.

"What a wasted summer! I hate this pandemic. Everything is going wrong."

My 20-year-old son sat at the kitchen table, arm's length from the cracked pitcher, venting his exasperation and defeat. His laptop was in the shop, for a second time, and he felt more cut off and dislocated from his normal life than ever. Unable to find an internship, stuck in his childhood bedroom after his college closed in March, this was the gravest insult of all. He was without that digital extension of his body, the computer.

"Sweetie, do you know what the Greatest Generation is?" I thought about my mother and father, and the beautifully etched pitcher set that my mother purchased from a glassblower in Italy after World War II.

He smiled. "Nana and Grandpa Carl!"

"And do you know why they got that name? They survived the Great Depression, and its job losses, hunger and evictions. Then they fought a world war, at home and overseas, which affected every family with blackouts, ration cards, and the premature death of a friend or family member. Those that are still alive, like your Nana, are enduring the threat of COVID-19, too many of them in isolation in nursing homes or dying alone in hospitals."

My son looked surprised. "I never thought of that. It is so sad."

I look at my son and feel his frustration. His generation was born in the shadow of 9/11. They have, in their short lives, experienced at least two economic recessions and now a worldwide pandemic. Their travel plans, their high school and college experiences, their job prospects, and their dreams for the future all are on hold.

But I have abiding hope for my son's generation. Like their grandparents and great-grandparents, these young people are enduring difficult and formative life experiences. Hardship has strengthened their bones with grit. Their DNA is encoded with a nimbleness to adapt quickly to ever-changing scenarios. Their brains are wired for evolution.

In contrast, I think about my privilege as a baby boomer, always too satisfied with incremental changes. I grew up white in a nation that continued to prosper. The country blossomed with bigger schools, more superhighways, a growing job market. My peers and I had every advantage. But too often we did not see those left behind. We did not see the cracks in the crystal. We did not foresee the shattering of our fragile glass world. I fear we have failed to fulfill our vision for a better future. While we patted ourselves on the back for decades of small changes and improvements, this generation dreams bigger: paying reparations to those impacted by systemic racism, adopting a "Green New Deal," defunding the police. I see the next Great Generation poised to step in and tackle the pain and brokenness that we, with our comfortable middle-class lives, ignored or were unable to repair: racism, climate change, gun violence. And we baby boomers stand by, still strong and plentiful in number, to support them as the next Great Generation leads the way.

My son looked at me patiently, lovingly, waiting for the lecture to continue.

"Somehow, Nana and Grandpa Carl and their peers did it all without laptops. Imagine what you all can do to fix this world with the benefits of technology and instant communication across the globe."

Yes, I think to myself, the time for grieving is over. It is time to put the cracked pitcher in the garbage.