How Much Do We Tell Our Children?

There is a grove of pines so lanky and tall that each one is trying to outgrow the next to reach their piece of open sky. Below the trees no grass grows and the dirt is carpeted with the pines' discarded needles and cones. The air may be muggy but the grove floor is cool and shaded and attracts a daily pilgrimage of teens who sit in a circle to talk, solve the problems of their world and pass joints 'round and 'round. It's not 2011. It's 1976. Those high school kids are now grown and most are, will, or have been parents to their own teens.

The visual sensory overload of the sixties swung back and forth on our black and white TV sets.  The pendulum tick tocked  from Bonanza, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show to horrific images of Vietnam, the setbacks and promise of the Civil Rights Movement, Free Love and the tie dyed drug culture of Haight-Ashbury. The young children of the sixties sat cross legged in front of their console TVs and watched it all unfold.

The sixties flowed into the seventies and the teens in my neighborhood, who were raised on that visual feast and famine, had cars and a little too much money. The grove of trees wasn't tucked away and secluded; it was on high school property and the number of students who sat in that circle was way too large for teachers, or the police who parked and watched from a block away, to disperse.

Crazy times. And just how much of your past do you share with your own children? I've told mine my life story. I've doled out information in snippets and parcels in moments that I thought would have the most impact. The piece of information that I have made abundantly clear is that I always had a mooring and a moral compass deep within my soul and that if there was one thing I would wish for them it is that they hold fast to their anchor and follow their own moral compass when life and times get crazy. Not if. When.

I've slogged through some swamps and scaled some proverbial mountains. We all have. My children will, too. I can tell them what may lay ahead but I can't live their lives for them. I can show them the way but I can't go with them. I can share my faults and my transgressions and the impact they had on my own life. I can stand beside them when they falter and celebrate when they're back on their feet. I can help reset their compass and drop their anchor in calmer water.