Bibi, I know that you just turned two, but I want to write to you. I want to tell you that I know that relationships will be very different when you grow up.
Today, people keep in touch with their family online, and assure me that it doesn’t mean they love any less.
It’s just that this life has made relationships extremely rushed. So I imagine that we will speak through Skype, MSN, and whatever new technology du jour appears.
I hesitate to write the word “letter,” because you probably don’t even know what that is.
I want to say that I’ve hugged you, and held you tight, savoring the “control” I have while you are still a littlegirl. I know that it won’t always be like this.
We play a lot together. We play with your dolls. We put them to sleep, wake them up, and feed them. I’m trying to give you a sense of reality. Of course, we use our wild imaginations a lot too. The cat flies. The carpet soars.We’ve been trying to invent the colors to paint the world.
We made up acreature that likes to kiss. He pops up in your window, smothering you with soft kisses. Well, I’m going to let you in on a secret: that creature is actuallyme. I’m trying to steal as many kisses as I can!
Sometimes I fear that young people’s relationships are moving towards the virtual world completely. Although I realize, that the virtual holds “reality” for them, it doesn’t for me, because I come from another time. The virtual doesn’t provide me with the same warmth and vivid emotion.
So I want you to feel a bit of heat and warmth, coming from the hugs we share and all the beautiful hours we spend together. Nothing can replace this. Not even the 500 friends on your social networks.
Perhaps, by living different experiences, you’ll be able to help your generation find a middle ground, where changes won’t have such a huge impact on human relationships.
I say humans. Of course, I’ve had my share of cyber friends. But nothing has compared to the love of the “real life” ones. Nothing beats the face-to-face interactions, the laughs, the stupid jokes, or the reminiscing of our schoolyard days.
And yet, there’s no right or wrong. Habits and customs change. As older people, we’ve lived a great part of our life with very different customs.
I feel the need to explain my childhood to you, so that you can compare these experiences to your “own tribe.” I’m sure you’ll learn a thing or two.
I don’t know if hopscotch exists anymore. I don’t think so. Those cozy afternoons where the entire family got together to watch TV, arguing over what to watch, are alsodistant memories.
The playful fighting signified that we were a family. The images on the TV where black and white. There was no remote control. No, we had to get up and actually change the channel. The lack of color, that we lived with, the black and whiteness, seems so foreign today. But that’s the way it was.
I know I’m spoiling you a bit. In the end, I’m no different from any other grandmother, contributing to making you feel “powerful” and “important.”
I encourage you. I tell you how intelligent you are, and how you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.
I hope I don’t spoil you too much. I cringe when I see those kids, who feel such extreme self-entitlement, because they’ve received too much affirmation from their parents.
That was different for me too. My parents lived during a time of war. Although there was no war in Brazil, there was a great fear that Hitler would conquer other countries. My own father, your great grandfather, enlisted as a volunteer and went to war. When my father and mother raised me, everything was rigid. If I got a 95 percent in school, they asked me why I hadn’t gotten 100 percent. Expectations for children were much higher. I’m not saying it was better back then, or that it’s better now. But the truth is we had to sweat more to obtain what we wanted. I don’t know exactly how this changed, but all the well known psychologists told us it was important to raise our kids by instilling high self esteem.
As my generation was growing up, Brazil was still an underdeveloped country. There was a rigid dictatorship, and working moms were almost unheard of. We fought against the dictatorship. It was a hard fight. We didn’t have Twitter, or social networks, or cell phones, to take pictures of what was happening. That only existed in our dreams, asan imaginary fruit of our idealistic minds. We couldn’t tell the world what was going on.
When I went abroad, to study, I heard things like “Do you live in the middle of the forest?” or “Are there schools in Sao Paulo?” “How do you even get to school?” Well, that didn’t do much for our self esteem. We were underdeveloped and unknown. Anyhow, both adjectives had the same effect.
These days, we are a BRIC. We are “chic.” The only thing foreigners used to know about Brazil was “Carnival” and “Pele.”
My business partner in India feels it too. He explains, “In the past, having a population of 1.2 billion was a problem, but now everybody says it’s a solution!”
So I believe that this generation has grown up with a higher Self Esteem than my own generation. That’s why older people feel that the youth is arrogant. Yet we lived in a different time, and I strongly believe that history determines culture, which in turn determines behavior.
Your parents’ behavior is already completely different from my own. No doubt, it’ll be incredibly different from yours too.
But let’s go back to the beginning of this story Bibi.
I’m giving you an abundance of kisses, taking you into my arms, hugging you, because I firmly believe that human contact is essential to human development.
The idea of love, affection, partnership, and being there for one other, I want you to know how very important that is.
Maybe in your generation, people have gotten used to digital love. But I think it’s crucial to tell you how it was before, so this story doesn’t get lost. And so that you can think about how you want to be.
Ink flowing on a page. That’s how I wrote this letter. Writing “tools” and “utensils” are different today, and I’m sure they’ll continue to evolve as you grow. Still, I cling to my pen because it’s the way I express closeness.
I can tell you stories, stories about life, my darling granddaughter. But if you want to fly… to really fly… it’s up to you!
Eline,
A touching and poignant letter to your grandchild. I wonder what she will think of it when she grows older?
Dave