the true millennials

Our children are our future. It's not an alternative fact, it simply is, and always has been, always will be. It's the nature of humanity. We die, they live on and take over. The cycle of life.

But this new set of children, these true millennial humans who didn't just come of age in the new century, but actually came to be as members of a new millennium, are somehow different, and the world that they will create will revolutionize all that we have known to date. They are just working their way through high school now, and while we, the baby boomers, learned about ecology, and taking care of the planet, not littering and trying to separate our recycling, for them the importance of this is wired into their very cells. We've taught them these things because we knew we should, and they have learned. We've given them choices--maybe too many choices, sometimes--about what they want to eat, where they want to go, what they want to wear and who they want to be with. And the presence of those eternal options, for better or worse, have had sweeping ramifications.

This is the generation that describes their heterosexual peers as "cis-gendered" without batting an eye. They accept a fluidity of gender identification as utterly normal. They don't care who you love, as long as you do it authentically, and while they may judge some things, as teenagers always are wont to do, their judgement is (mostly) specific and not targeted at race or sex or religion. The burden of proof falls on those who display their prejudice, an act for which they are deeply chastised. "You be you" they say, and largely mean it. This is the generation that has redefined "aesthetic" to include a hard-wired understanding that everyone see things differently, and that those differences are curious and interesting--and important to know about. So when one has neon green hair, the other appreciates it with interest but honestly says, "that's just not my aesthetic." It is a viewpoint turned completely over on itself, and one that will make our world, our future, something we never could have imagined possible just a hundred years ago.

And their love. They love humans as humans, without considering the right or wrong of it. Their "aesthetic" on relationships turns what we understand as attraction on it's head. The question, "so, are you attracted to boys or girls?" is not so easily answered anymore, or needn't be. To reply, "I'm not sure yet" is as valid a response as any. No longer must they call themselves homosexual, heterosexual or bi-curious, for they have the choice--that we started by letting them have mac and cheese or hot dogs, or wearing orange polka dots and pink stripes together, and applauding their creativity--and they accept these wide open options as their due.

I believe we will see emerge a generation of humans who choose to love based on deeper qualities than physical characteristics and gender compatibility, but on true connection. While our parents told us to "look beyond the surface for the real person inside", they really do. Conceivably we will see lifelong relationships built solely on personal connection, attraction deriving from a deep seated trust and caring, regardless of gender. We talk about sexual orientation, but I think by the next century that will disappear entirely, and humans will connect and build relationships with other humans, regardless of color, sex or the absence of sexual identity altogether. And I'm really proud of them, and maybe a little even us, for that.

Why Choir and parts of soul

Yeah Ok so first I looked at this blog (because I googled myself and it came up--yikes!) and thought how awful that I hadn't written anything but then I opened it and found three unfinished posts so maybe I'll work on that.

But meanwhile I just dropped the girl at choir camp and as usual she extracted a ragged hunk of my soul for leaving here there, worse this leaving than many before because she (chose to?) bring back all the anxiety of the last time, the first time, the pre-actual-choir time when we were stuck in traffic for 5 hours (yes) and so the whole sensation of the place made her fall apart. And cry and grip me and beg me not to make her. So fresh on the other side of that, it seems important to talk a little about choir, and why it's important and what makes it good, to remind myself why I forced her in and that she'll actually be fine on Friday. I mean, she spent 3.5 weeks in England with the people last summer, she can't withstand 5 days in the woods??

This is her gift. She's had it forever. It's hard wired, and I think because of that she dismisses it as nothing. Everything else is hard and so she thinks the one thing that's easy is nothing. But it's not nothing. It wasn't nothing when we determined that she probably had perfect pitch at 3, or more or less confirmed that with her first piano teacher at 5. It wasn't nothing after her first solo with the chorus in Weston, in 2nd grade, when Joanne Hammill came over to me with tears in her eyes, babbling about breath control and vocal reach and how hard that was. Or when Mr Webster started recruiting her when she was 8 and she wouldn't go because she had to get up too early. (And I loved Joanne, she learned so much there and it was super fun.)

And Treble Chorus, and Boston Children's Chorus, and Select (where they didn't read music and the girl drama of middle school almost destroyed her). And clarinet and more piano and omg who LOVES music theory? I mean... but she does. And Andy Icocheca from Vienna Boys who begged her to join the Pops/Tanglewood Feeder chorus, but it's so good she didn't because he left and the musical theater lady came in, and my sweet, humble, talented and shy girl is so not musical theater and we know because we tried over and over. She's not brash enough.

And now Richard and Colin and Trinity.

The caliber of this training, the resources and opportunities that it offers (sonja tengblad! sophie michaux! jeremy harman the cello teacher!) would never have been there without it. Learning to deal with be with connect with the ever so very wealthy. It's *free*. But that doesn't matter, because I'd pay thousands to keep it going and make it available to her.

And the new cello thing. What kid decides to spend the summer taking up cello?

I guess it's worth the hunk of my soul. Even though I still feel it gone. And she WILL be ok, despite the presence of her acrimonious "ex" and I have to believe that.