Notes from the caboose of the Baby Boom

Baby Boomers, as a demographic, are defined as those born between the years 1946 and 1964. Based on that relatively wide swath of time, I happen to fall at the very end of the Baby Boom, having been born toward the tail end of 1964. But culturally, everything about my world -- from the time I was born until now -- has been defined and measured by this generation of which I am a fringe member at best. Speaking of being at the tail end, I am the youngest of four children. Extend that further, and I am the youngest of eight cousins – my father was an only child, so there are no cousins on that side; my mother has a sister (my aunt), who also had four children. Now, the eight of us – my three siblings and my four cousins – range in age from 48 (that would be me, 49 later this year) all the way up to 60-plus. We are aging boomers, as the entire demographic gets gray. But again, I am on the young side of it and I do not fit neatly into the cultural mores and shifts that have defined the Baby Boom generation.

--When Boomers were “coming of age” as hippies in the Peace/Love era of the late 1960s, I was just entering grade school. “By the time we got to Woodstock …” I was probably playing T-ball.

--When Boomers grew up, shed the flowers in their hair and the vinyl albums and the lava lamps, and starting making serious coin as “yuppies” in the 1980s, I was graduating from high school, entering college and trying to find my way early in my career.

--Now, as Boomers start retiring and typically denying the inevitable aging process and the march of time, I am still not quite there. The thought of retirement for me is a fuzzy mystery, what with a first-grader at the tail end of our family.

So yeah. Technically, I’m a Boomer, but I am really not. But again, my childhood is filled with memories and is shaped to its core by this very generation and the Greatest Generation that spawned us. My cousins, my siblings and I grew up in two very Italian families in the Bronx. My family bolted for Jersey the year before I was born. Of the eight of us, seven were born in Da Bronx and I’m the only Jersey boy. But still, my childhood included many ethnic holiday celebrations, many of them in Da Bronx. I remember Christmases that were very loud and smoky, with adults yelling in some bastardized combination of Italian and English. No one was mad at each other, per se. They were just yelling to be heard, over ridiculously obnoxious Italian music played on scratchy turntables, because everyone was talking at the same time. Wine and booze flowed freely among the adults, and second-hand smoke was plentiful. Driving across the GW Bridge in a very full station wagon, I most definitely did not have a car seat as a toddler and later most definitely did not use seat belts. We rode our bikes without helmets. I am not proud of any of these facts, but we all survived into adulthood, and these memories shaped who we are and who we became.

Why am I bringing all of this up, here and now? As always, we are drawn to times of introspection during key moments in life – weddings and funerals being two of them. And so there I was in Carmel the other night for the funeral service of my oldest cousin’s oldest child – my second cousin, gone way too soon at age 35. I remember when she was born. I went to her First Communion. I have seen her at weddings and funerals, but we were not all that close; in fact, to be honest, I barely knew her. Still, when news of her passing was posted on Facebook and my wife saw it, it was jarring indeed. At the service, I caught up with my cousins. As a group, we are getting old and gray indeed, but we are making our way in life. We all noted with chagrin that the funerals are where we seem to get together anymore. Any funeral is a sad occasion. A funeral for someone’s child, relatively early in adulthood and unexpected, can be crushing. My oldest cousin lost her baby. Even as she edges closer to old age in her early 60s, the sting is just as real. I saw my cousin’s children, many of them adults now as well. I told them all that I remembered when they were born, probably went to their baptisms or Communions. One of the younger ones is a senior in high school, and just submitted his application to Marist for admission. Small world. This next generation has dealt with loss as we all have, in the form of grandparents, aunts, uncles. On this night, they were mourning their oldest cousin.

My second cousin was a college professor, teaching creative writing. She had just recently started to pursue her PhD in the field. The hugs and the sobs of her mother, my oldest cousin, were very real and extremely emotional. One of my cousins, in her sadness, commented on how she wished she could just “turn back time” so that her niece could still be here, so that we could all be those young Italian kids in the Bronx again. It’s a common sentiment, but alas things do not work that way. Upon leaving, we all vowed to stay in touch and stop meeting this way; we vowed to take better care of ourselves. Driving home in the misty darkness through Putnam and Dutchess counties, the thought that occurred to me then -- as it did last year at this time, when we were dealing with a sudden loss of our own -- was to live in the moment and cherish each moment with each other, because we never know how long it will last, or if it will be our last, with those around us. The thoughts for this post came to me during this drive home. As I finish typing it here and now, it occurs to me that this hasty, 1,000-word essay is probably an appropriate way to honor the memory of a writer, the second cousin I did not know well and who left the family way too soon.