still growing up

“God is dead and we killed him.”
– Frederick Nietzsche

I spent the character-defining part of my childhood in a village where life followed the rhythm of nature: the sunset brought the day to an end, and the rooster’s song heralded the start of a new one. People crossed themselves and prayed upon waking and before bed. Sundays were for church. From 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the monotonous hymns of worship echoed, voices humming in unison, bodies bowing, knees bending in a rhythmic dance, crossing ourselves together. One voice stood above the rest, leading us, the faithful, in prayer against temptation and evil.

My grandfather passed away when I was in my third year. I don’t quite remember him. I think I have a memory of him, but I’m unsure if it’s something I’ve fabricated out of my need to connect with him. Perhaps it’s an old picture, a story my aunt told every time we spoke of him, or a sense that he loved me deeply—mixed, and poof, a memory is born. People didn’t talk much about him. My father never mentioned him; he never stopped hurting. My grandmother spoke of him only a few times a year: when she dreamed of him, when it was time to take offerings to church in his name, or when we looked at pictures and she’d suddenly say, “He was a handsome man, your grandfather.” My aunt, whom I saw only once a year, talked about him the most—probably because we were rarely together and people tend to repeat the same conversations each time they meet.

Then, there was my mother—the neutral party. She described him as gentle, kind, soft-spoken, a man who couldn’t harm even an insect, much less take part in the common homestead practice of procuring animal protein—he left that task to my grandmother. I don’t quite remember him, but I miss him. I think everyone did. His absence left a void, I now recognize as a father. It’s a void that could only be filled by an elderly male figure who has experienced life beyond the other family members. (This is not a chauvinist remark—far from it. All individuals have valuable insights. In another essay, I’ll discuss how the absence of my maternal grandmother has shaped my family landscape.)

A void, filled with generational trauma. A void I wonder if he could have filled with love, patience, trust, and understanding. Meanwhile, my father worked full-time, cared for me as a single parent, and managed my grandmother’s homestead. He struggled to juggle all these roles while his relationship with his own mother deteriorated, much like the osteoporosis that set into her bones, and his relationship with his sister eroded like the hills behind the house. Meanwhile, my grandmother managed the homestead, cared for me, and handled my grandfather’s postmortem spiritual needs—while her relationship with her son diminished in much the same way. Meanwhile, my aunt worked to keep her own struggling marriage afloat and take care of her daughters, far from the bruised homestead, all while her relationship with her mother remained superficial, and her relationship with her brother came to a halt. Three people—angry and frustrated with each other, each missing my grandfather, or perhaps a different time, a different place.

In church, the voice that rose above us belonged to a 5-foot-4-inch, skinny old man with smiling eyes, a button nose, and deep-cut cheeks, hidden behind a long white beard. He wore a phelonion (sleeveless cape), sticharion (tunic-like robe), epitrachelion (stole that hangs around the neck), and zone (belt)—God’s golden radiance. He drove a tiny Trabant and had no family. The perfect grandfather. There was a story in the village that a child had run in front of his car, he ran over him, and the child died. But he was a priest, well-respected by his congregation. How could that be? It didn’t matter. He spoke on behalf of the big guy upstairs—He was human, fallible, and that brought me even closer to him.

Then came my first communion. The days leading up to this rite of passage tormented me. Would I fall out of favor with him? I had lied to my father, hidden food instead of eating it, stressed him out, barely passed classes without doing my homework half the time, and even stole a toy. I still remember his gentle, kind, and soft-spoken voice, his patience, trust, attentiveness, and love.

I wanted to be like him: a priest, a grandfather, a void-filler.

Much of the world has changed. “Change is the only constant,” but the rate at which change occurs, and continues to accelerate, often doesn’t allow people enough time to process and internalize it. Humanity has shifted from passing wisdom from one generation to the next around campfires and dinner tables, to rejecting the previous generation’s norms, and now constantly redefining the self throughout a single lifetime. Many family names originate from a craft passed down through generations: Smith, Baker, Plumber, Wright, Tinker, Weaver, Taylor, Fuller, Draper, Shearer, Miller, Fletcher, Cooper, Farmer, Mason, Carpenter, Thatcher, Tyler, Chandler, Cartwright, Potter, Turner, Shoemaker—and many more, in English and every other culture and language in the world.

But what is the psychological effect of rejecting generational wisdom, or when we’re forced to redefine ourselves repeatedly? Thinking outside the box is a strength and a virtue, but how far can we stray from the box before we lose ourselves? If we constantly redefine ourselves, what generational stability and sense of security can we pass on to our children?

“God is dead and we killed him.” I will not spend time discussing the pros and cons of religious faith. Instead, I will focus on religion as a cultural vehicle to transmit community values across generations. In Europe, people increasingly questioned the validity of divine existence after traumatic events like the Bubonic Plague, the Spanish Flu, WWI, and, most recently and most devastatingly for faith, the atrocities of WWII. Nietzsche’s prophetic words reflect the reality that our acts of unthinkable, biblical-scale violence have destroyed our belief in a greater good and, in turn, gave birth to cynicism. The fact that Nietzsche wrote these words in the 1880s, long before the world wars, genocides, and the atomic bomb, only highlights the ongoing and progressive moral degradation.

Fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers—where does that leave us as the clock ticks ever closer to midnight? I can only speak from my perspective—as a father with some life experience and some knowledge. My goal is to use this space, and these personal reflections, to understand and heal my generational trauma, to offer food for thought, and to reflect on the banality and, yet, the unmistakable significance of raising little humans while we, the parents, are still growing up ourselves.