The link between generations in families
An ideal family should build by a harmonious relationship between all members and
there’re some links between those different generations in a family, strongly. I think
that memories and experiences are the links between generations in families. Because
in one family, there might be several generations, such as grandparents, parents,
children, children’s children. All family members have been children, and when they
grow up they become parents. In this progress, memories become the most useful
sources for teaching the young generations as experiences. For instance, when a father
saw his son played on some dangerous objects, he might memorize the experience he
had been through in his childhood and tells his son don’t touch that danger.
Family is the place we call home. We call all family members relatives and they know
each other very well. However, do you think about how people feel when they
became parents from children? It must be a little unbelievable. Such as the famous
writer White described the feelings when he went to the lake second time with his
children not his dad in his article ‘Once More to the Lake’. He said that everything in
the beach were as same as the first time he went with his father and he really couldn’t
figure out whether he was a son or a father at that moment. “There had been no years
between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one – the one that was part of
memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know
which rod I was at the end of.” (157) White used those vivid languages to tell us he
really confused about his state, because he could fell the feelings when he went to the
lake with his father even though he had become a father at that moment. He couldn’t
know which stage he was standing by, a father or the little son. When White was a
child, he had been to the lake and he also seen the dragonfly. So those memories made
him confused, but in other words, because those memories he could learn how to be a
father and how to teach his own son. In his childhood memories, there must be some
experiences he learned from his own father and then those experiences became a
resource which could help White teach his child. This is the link, learning from old
generations and teaching young generations though the learning memories.
Fortunately, more examples showed this fact. Robert Coles, a famous author and
psychologist who won the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for volumes 1 and 2 of
Children of Crisis, told a story about an Appalachia girl that the girl’s father didn’t do
well as a businessman when there’s two miners getting killed. Many people felt the
father was a bad businessman and the daughter could fell little about moral reflection
from what her dad did. Robert also wanted to show that the young generations might
be influenced by their parents dramatically and then those memories which affect
them will become the resources they use to teach the second young generations. Then,
from the article ‘Notes from a son to his father’ which described a story between a
rude father and his son by a fourth-generation Chinese-American, Russell C, Leong.
Leong made a fiction between his father and him, then respected a fact that he learned
how to be a father during the progress he being a child. All evidences above prove
that memories about being a child will became the basic resources which used to
teach and guide young generations when child became old.