A stranger in a techno world

The generation gap between my students and me continues to grow although I seldom think about it. Sometimes, however, I am given not very subtle reminders.

A student was telling me about some health problems her mother was having, and mentioned her age. Suddenly the woman I had thought of as a contemporary was revealed to be 20 years younger than I am, young enough to be my daughter. How did this happen? Just when I get used to being one age, I realize I am older. I can’t say I am jealous. In fact I can find small pleasures in places only a few of my students have discovered.

There are young people who will say to me straight out, “I am not a reader.” That is not entirely true. They read things on their computers all the time. What they mean is that they have yet to discover the delicious pleasure of putting on a favorite nightgown and crawling into bed with a good book. I did that just last night. Having finished, finally, a non-fiction book informing me in excruciating detail more reasons to believe the world is an awful place, I felt a hunger for fiction. The Edith Wharton collection of short stories in the pile on my nightstand was just what I needed. Propped up with pillows, my cat curled on the end of my bed, I opened “Roman Fever,” a story of two aging mothers. The book felt good in my hands. The cicadas provided late-summer sounds; the air was cool. Not a reader, my dear? Whatever can you mean? Reading in bed with your cat and singing cicadas is not the mere processing of words on a page any more than dining with good friends at a well-set table is merely starvation prevention. Some young people are in on this secret, but not nearly enough of them.

Another pleasure too few of them enjoy is doing absolutely nothing. One told of the years when her family had a simple dwelling by a river. There was no television and no phone. No one could disturb them unless they, too, were living along the river. She misses those weekends of quiet. There is too much scheduling in her life, too much activity.

Another student read a description of “languid summer days” when people spent time lying in a hammock, drinking lemonade, and doing not much of anything. “Languid? Is that how you pronounce it? That’s what I want,” she said. Yet young people experience anxiety if they turn off their cell phones, even for an hour. I asked them if they left their phones on all night. “Oh, yes.” I am too old to understand why anyone not delivering babies for a living would think this a good idea. I did it for two months when my sister was ill because I had given the hospital my cell phone number, but I found it stressful to be on call all the time. Many of my students don’t even know what it is to have time when no one can call you. It frightens them. They think they will miss something or someone will be angry with them for being unavailable for a few hours. Some of their mothers become frantic if several hours go by without a phone call being returned. I can see why a few of them are captivated by the very idea of languid summer days.

I feel my age when I get an email about orientation sessions to deal with our new Web mail system at work. I wondered how many of us sighed and cared not one whit about how wonderful it was going to be. We are content. Contentment is not something Americans approve of. We are supposed to long for something newer and better. I like e-mail well enough, but I also like coming home, climbing the front steps and getting my mail out of the old brass mailbox that used to hang on my childhood home. It feels like a sacred ritual, lifting the mail from the same mailbox my young mother opened every day.

Being with my students is sometimes like visiting a foreign country, but it is good to be there with them.  I may be a tourist, but I try to be an appreciative one.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a Mary Baldwin College chaplain.