(Stop, children! What’s that sound? Robin Pugh Yi contemplates what’s goin’ down with the older generation.)
I have tickets to go to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert with my parents in a couple of weeks.
It’s a family ritual. My husband gets tickets to performances by old hippies like Tom Paxton and Arlo Guthrie. I sigh and ask if he isn’t yet tired of Baby Boomers’ belief that they are inventors and keepers of the Holy Grail of Perpetual Adolescence. How can he maintain a straight face listening to “Hair” lyrics?
Then I go, because he has tickets. And it means a lot to Mom to go with us, enthusiastically sing along, and elbow me when I roll my eyes.
Then, inevitably, something breaks down my guard. Pete Seeger sings “Abiyoyo,” or Judy Collins sings “In My Life,” and I am once again a little girl in the Summer of Love. My parents, my aunts and uncles, their friends are so young, so sweet and earnest and unaware of everything to come. Sincerely trying to teach their children well.