What Does It Mean to Have Lost a Generation?

I stretched out my arms and leaned back against the bench. The sun shone down on the park behind me, while a gentle wind rustled the leaves of nearby trees–a perfect mixture of warm sunshine and crisp autumn air.

It was a peculiar location for a park bench. The park was large, but this particular bench was placed in the far corner, under a lone tree, facing not the park, but the intersection beyond. Along the street to my right sat a row of sturdy little houses. They all had the look of having been built within a few years of each other, some number of decades ago. Perpendicular to this, a few small shops marked the path downtown. All of this, however, made the bench a favorite place of mine to sit and think.

The sound of laughter caught my attention, and I turned my head. Three young boys, no more than four years old, wrestled over a ball in the grass. Their mother and sister sat on a blanket nearby, enjoying tea together, seemingly oblivious to the raucous mood surrounding them. (The mother, however, was certain to glance in the boys’ direction every minute or two.)

I thought I recognized the woman. She seemed to frequent the park with her children, although I did not remember her having four. A passing thought suggested that perhaps two of the boys were friends.

Not far away from this family, a boy stood holding a string. His younger sister ran about in the distance, chasing the tail of the kite attached to its end.

A car door opened in the adjacent parking, and I noticed the newspaper stand. A team of doctors had discovered... I could not decipher the rest of the headline.

Directly across the street, a car pulled into the driveway. Within seconds, a young girl was dashing across the lawn towards the woman who stood in the doorway. With a cry of “Grandma!”she was in the woman’s arms. A moment later, the grandfather appeared in the doorway. Pausing only to rustle the girl’s curly hair and whisper a word into her ear, he proceeded toward the driveway to help his daughter carry the luggage indoors. He glanced across the street, and caught my stare. I had not realized that the woman who lived in that house had a husband, or any family at all.

The wind blew stronger now. I heard a cry behind me. The string in the boy’s hand had snapped; his wayward kite spiraled into the distance. As the gust gained strength, I clutched the bench, then laughed at myself. Winds grab kites, not people. Shivering, I made up my mind to return home...

The chilling gust of wind jerked me awake. I sat up, startled—I had not intended to fall asleep. But as suddenly as the wind had risen, it was gone. The sun had disappeared, and with it the car, the woman, and her daughter and parents. The house reverted to the austere facade that I had previously remembered. The front door opened, and the woman came out, hurriedly shuffling over to find something of value from her car in the driveway.

I turned my head to see if the picnickers remained. A mother—the mother—looked on as her four-year-old son and daughter played in the grass. Her faint smile faded as she watched her son attempting to convince his sister to play ball.

I glanced in the direction of the boy who had flown the kite, but saw no kite, and no girl. Not far from where the boy had held the kite string was a young athlete, trudging across the park in his football pads, helmet in hand. Whether it was the same boy I could not tell.

My eyes darted now toward the newspaper stand to check the headline: jobs would not be leaving the area, though many people had feared otherwise.

The woman across the street closed her car door as a familiar (or so I thought) older man jogged down the street. She appeared startled for but a moment, then quickly recovered. He passed by, careful to act the part of a stranger. The woman returned to the house, and closed the door behind her.