a lost generation

reunion-pic

A Lost Generation

Mid-90s, still too hot for the hill, but with a breeze it’s not too hot in the tree shade on the edge of the community park where a large banner roped between two posts announces the Clark/Brighton Family Reunion, 2015.

There’s something not quite right with this reunion. Everyone out there shuffling around the picnic tables is fifty or older, all of them overweight, the women with perm-tinted hair bundled in tight curls, wearing pedal-pushers and loose blouses with flower designs on them, the men wearing baggy three-quarter-length cargo pants and Hawaiian shirts. There’s one woman maybe in her 30s, moving nervously thru this lethargic gathering, and a boy perhaps three years old following close behind her, looking up at everyone with a startled expression.

To say more would be conjecture, and I’m too worn out from weeks of working in 100+ temperatures to turn this into a Shard, but it does look like a whole generation has been cut out of the loop.

One of the women just leaned in close and took a picture of the little boy, and he burst into tears.

There’s a novel in this somewhere, waiting to be written once winter hits and work slows down.

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