What Life at the Tower is really like

More than just changes in society May 11, 2009

It happened on Tuesday sometime, but they are not exactly sure when. The funeral was on Friday. It was quite unsettling to see so many young people at a funeral, especially when they had so recently graduated from high school, and the autopsy confirmed the cause of their friend’s death was from a heart attack at age 19. And then there were the others sitting around me, a young lady with her friends — a  couple with a baby who were not yet comfortable handling a child. After a quarter of an hour, another lady came in and sat next to the young father, took the baby in her arms and began to rock and show the child the attention it craved. As the service began, the baby began to fuss a bit, and the lady unobtrusively  took him out to the alcove for a while. As she came back to her seat, I thought what a wonderful mother this was… except that she is his grandmother, not his mother.

I know others who are raising their grandchildren, some because their adult children are not fully adults yet (will they ever be?), and some because they refuse to take ownership of their offspring at all, so the granparents are left with the responsibility. It is an unfortunate detail of modern society. 

Often we hear about parents who, rather than being physically absent,  ’allow entertainment venues’ to raise their children. They come from all walks of society, and are primarily a symptom  of the parents’ lack of confidence in their own abilities. One of the benefits of living in an urban area is not yet common here, and is a novelty to much of our population. We recently rode the Texas Railway Express (TRE) from the Intermodal Center in Fort Worth to Union Station in Dallas and enjoyed relaxing, rather than fighting traffic, on the way to spend the afternoon in the West End.  It was an enjoyable ride until three young men sat near us, loudly and repeatedly spouting language which would have them sent to their assistant principal if they were in a classroom. As a former teacher, it is not within my comfort zone to just ignore the casual use of  ‘f***-that’ and other four letter epithets intentionally used to make society feel uncomfortable, especially around the several small children near us.

Later that night, having enjoyed a cool front which moved through the area, we opened our windows to let the breeze in while we slept. One of the negatives of living downtown is not bothersome at this height when the windows are closed, but on this night our slumber was interrupted by the sounds of people returning to their cars in the parking garages after the bars closed. As you awake to the noises, you realize what you are hearing: the same four-letter epithets being shouted by drunken patrons who sound like sailors cussing after years at sea, the screech of tires, the blaring of horns honking as the angry, drunken drivers circle round and round to reach the bottom of the parking garage and make their way home.  The last thing I remember was noticing the time as the noise stopped. 2:40 a.m. Time to go back to sleep.