SPARKY KNITS THE GENERATIONS TOGETHER

I have just had the enormous pleasure of spending a week with my nephew Alan. He is my sister Olga’s only child and I have not spent any time with him since he was nine years old. (He is now 26)

He stayed with me in my apartment and we usually ended up talking to one another until three in the morning. In Latino cultures the oldest son in the family takes on the mantle of authority inherited from the father and that is precisely the role that I occupy in Olga's family. My professional and academic successes are held up as models for other family members to emulate. Of equal importance is the fact that I provide the living connection between and among the generations as I now have the dubious honor of being the oldest in the tribe. I gave Alan my father's 250 page autobiography to read and this document provided him with an endless source of questions. There is an appropriate African saying which goes as follows:

When an old person dies, a library burns down, and I see it as my responsibility to provide the living documentation of the family journey which will be handed down intergenerationaly.

In an understandable connection with the search for generational history, Alan, at 26 years of age, is just leaving late adolescence and entering into early adulthood with a tremendous rush. For the past three years he has been touring much of the United States and Europe as the drummer in a rock band. As a vintage “Breeskin”, music occupies a prominent place in his soul.

After his band precipitously exploded, Alan tried to find a niche in the ordinary world and has become the top real estate agent for his firm in Las Vegas. This is as far away from the music profession as possible and creates a large amount of stress in terms of where he wants to go next in his development.

After the intense week that we spent with one another it is relatively straightforward for me to reach certain conclusions about Alan both because of my professional training and the fact that we are intricately connected.

His appearance is that of someone with movie star looks. Alan is not at all aware of the effect he has on women and I watch with total admiration as women attempt to catch his attention. He is totally modest about his appearance which adds, of course, spice to his charm. He works out vigorously and has the appetite for food of a healthy young man.

Moving beyond the physical to the psychological, Alan is an exquisitely sensitive human being. All five of his senses bring a rush of information into his awareness and, at times, threaten to overwhelm him with the amount of input information.

In addition, although he doesn't know this about himself yet, he is a nurturing male and is basically androgynous while being very comfortably hetero.

He has two powerful women in his life for whom he feels totally responsible. They are his mother, Olga, my sister, and his fiancée, Tambi. Both of these women strongly depend upon him for parts of their emotional security and he sees it as his task to be their Guardian. He was also raised in a strongly Catholic environment and is dealing with issues of guilt and shame on a daily basis although he has a clearly defined operative sense of honor which he follows in a praiseworthy manner.

I hope that my words do not sound excessively clinical; I care for Alan deeply as I strongly identify with his quest for authenticity and I am honored to contribute to his journey in any way that I can.

His mother, Olga, has expressed a desire to visit me and I have been invited by Alan and Tambi to their wedding in Las Vegas next September and I will be sure to attend.

Before Alan left to return home, my dear friend Rosemary Perticari filmed a two-hour video of Alan and I talking about a wide range of subjects. Once again, I am contributing this DVD to the intergenerational library. I will attempt to make this video available to people who might be interested in it.