On the Shore of Twenty-Something

The sweetest gift of having been a teacher for many years is the grown-up students who linger in your life. Maybe you’ll be entering the supermarket, and a strapping young man will call out to you, and you’ll look at his vaguely familiar face and recall the sixth grade boy he once was, as happened to me the other day. On this occasion it was Bernardo, a bright, good-natured fellow who is now taking courses at City College. Friendly and respectful, he made me feel as though I had been someone important in his life, and it cheered me for the rest of the day.

My heart spills over with a rambunctious roster of kids who passed through my classroom on their way to the world, and it’s a treat to glimpse them as adults. Most of my teaching experience was in two small rural schools, each set in a community whose children feel connected to it, and although they often venture to places faraway, they almost always find their way back, at least for a visit. As a result, the delight of running into former students is not a rarity at all.

Once in a while, however, the teacher-student relationship actually evolves into a friendship. In the picture, for example, are two of the all-time greatest -- Parker and Ming -- and to the extent I am a current presence in their lives, I feel nothing short of honored. Ming in particular has glimpsed plenty of my folly and vulnerability, and if I get too hung up on the fact that not so very long ago I was the teacher and she the little girl, she says, “Cynthia...you’ve got to put it in perspective. That was at least twelve years ago. Twelve years for me is literally half of my life! It’s just not that recent anymore.” With these words, she frees me to be myself and to discover the dimensions of an inter-generational friendship with someone other than my own abundantly loved daughter, with whom there is always that mother-daughter dynamic.

A gifted writer, Ming helped me to sort through pages of my own work to select a submission for a scholarship application to a writing program this fall. Her advice was sound and candid, and in this instance she was the teacher indeed to the student that is me. (She also reminds me bluntly and often to love myself a little more. Why is that so hard?) Now Ming has won a Luce Fellowship to live and work in, of all places, Mongolia (her choice), and she has invited me to visit. I’ve been complaining for a long time about my unquenched wanderlust, my desire to go somewhere faraway and exotic. “How many times in your life is someone going to invite you to stay with them in Mongolia?” she asks me. Only once, I suppose, and that was it.

Then there’s Parker, who has been unique and Parker-esque from the time he was a child. He is brilliant and quirky and listens to the beat of his own drum (a tonbak). Parker hated high school, which I can completely understand, but he also had the courage to drop out, against everyone’s advice, and this was quite a few years before it became sort of cool and trendy for smart kids to do that. It certainly didn’t impair his academic career. I’m pretty sure Parker is a computer genius, but he’s also an avid juggler, an environmental activist, and a world traveler, among so many other things. Parker and I have shared some moments over the years, but to me one of the finest was when I ran into him at a demonstration against the then-pending invasion of Iraq a few years ago. We marched side-by-side for a stretch, united in our anger and our hope, still believing in those days that reason would prevail. And I felt proud of him. I often do.

Last week, Ming and Parker showed me slides on computer of their recent travels. Parker’s featured a soundtrack of carefully chosen music for each country he visited and a map at the start of each segment that zoomed in on the place we were about to see. Of course, being twenty-something is a foreign country in itself, and although I was just a whirlwind kind of tourist in that nation of youth, I enjoyed passing through, and they made me feel welcome.

We were in a place near UCSB with strong coffee and wireless internet access, the kind of hang-out frequented by students for studying and socializing. I don’t remember how, but for some reason we got on the topic of Facebook and the fact that it was now open to everyone.

“Everyone? I asked. "Like even me?”

“Even you,” replied Parker. “You could sign up right now.”

I should clarify here that I am not in need of a new social network. My real interest in Facebook would be to have a new kind of access to my daughter’s world, to connect with her from a different angle. I know it’s dumb, but I wasn’t really thinking that deeply. I was also just curious, I guess. And it sounded kind of cool. And the tide was pulling me strongly toward the shore of twenty-something. And I was flotsam and jetsam, fallen overboard from the ship of middle age.

“Yes,” I said, “Let’s do it.”

And that’s how I came to have a Facebook page. Parker and Ming agreed to be my first Facebook friends. I went to their pages, looked at their networks, their groups, their long lists of friends, even their favorite books and quotes. There was so much information there. I couldn’t wait to go to my daughter’s page.

Parker and Ming looked at each other. “You can’t just go to someone’s page,” Ming explained. “She has to agree to be your friend first.”

I had been a bit hazy on this rule. “Is she YOUR friend?” I asked hopefully.

Parker and Ming looked at each other again. “Not sure about the ethics of showing your friend’s Facebook page to the friend’s mother,” Parker mused.

So there it was. Not only am I the oldest person on Facebook, but I am destined to have the fewest friends.

My husband advised me against it, but I did in fact ask my daughter to become my Facebook friend. I told myself it was all a sociological experiment. I knew she would reject me. I just wanted to see how exactly she would do that. She chose to ignore me, a good method. It’s effective and unambiguous but not hurtful. And I respect her for it.