I'm in a different generation than my mother,
and she doesn't understand my gasping panic
when an entire thesis paper is replaced with
fs, because I saved too fast.
Thank God for control Z, I say,
I am saved.
She laughs at my dramatic gratitude and I think,
she must think God uses a Mac.
When she sees a blue screen of death,
her funny bone is tickled.
She doesn't see the people trapped inside,
the pictures burning in the flames of a structure
that was once a home.
She laughs at the blue screen and I think,
she could be a maniac.
I'm in a different generation than my mother,
and nothing reminds us of that more
than the piles of paper and news journals
that slip through the space in my house
designed for such things,
by someone who existed
far before I was born.
Did you read this? she asks.
Yes, I tell her,
three days ago when it was written and emailed out.
I didn't have to wait for the man in blue
to wrestle it from the hands of the factory workers
whose entire career rests on slipping rubberbands
around my mother's magazines,
so she can read as she sips tea before work.
I laugh at the complexity and I know she thinks,
I must not have a soul that sees the beauty
of a working humanity.
I'm in a different generation than my mother
and we often don't understand
each other.
She shakes her head when I tell people
I live on the internet, and
that in many ways,
I was even born here.
Her womb tells a different story,
and she was there when she emptied it,
My laundry basket tells a different story,
and she is here,
emptying it.
She sings while she works,
doing what a machine could do faster,
but then,
rumor is, she laughed with joy when
I was born.
She could be a maniac.
I'm in a different generation than my mother
and the things we say to each other
so often sound absurd,
that we laugh.
And in the laughter that starts
on the same note,
and ends on the same upticked sigh,
the magazine articles
emailed and mailed
seem absolutely ridiculous,
because in the most important ways,
the generations aren't so different
after all.
But then,
I could be a maniac.
___________________________________
This poem is older than dirt, but I thought of it today when I received another article about how to function in a multi-generational home. Then I accidentally deleted an entire file when trying to save it, and thought of it again.
Are there many generations in your home?
