Things My Generation Didn't Say (and What I'm Learning From My Grandson)

My grandson is fourteen. His name is Anthony. Last Thanksgiving, he told the whole table he has anxiety.

Just like that. Between the antipasto and the manicotti. "I have anxiety and I started seeing a counselor and it's helping."

My wife said, "We're proud of you, sweetheart." My daughter nodded. My son-in-law said, "Takes guts, buddy."

I didn't say anything. Not because I wasn't proud. Because I didn't have the words. I've never had the words. My generation of men from Newark—Italian, Irish, Portuguese, whatever—we didn't get the words. We got work.

So here's a list. Things my generation didn't say, and what I'm starting to learn from a fourteen-year-old kid who's braver than I've ever been.

1. "I'm not okay."

My father was an electrician. His father was an electrician. I became an electrician. The family business was not discussing how you felt. The family business was wiring buildings and coming home and watching the game and going to bed. If you were not okay, you went to the garage and you were not okay by yourself, and then you came back inside and you were fine.

Anthony says "I'm not okay" the way I say "pass the salt." Like it's just information. Not a crisis. Not a weakness. Just a status update.

I'm fifty-five years old and I'm still learning that a status update is allowed.

2. "I need help."

I fell off a ladder in 2019. Twelve feet. Bruised three ribs, sprained my wrist. Went back to work the next day. Didn't tell anyone except my foreman, and only because he saw me wince.

Anthony needs help with algebra and he texts three friends and a tutor and his mom and probably the governor of New Jersey. The kid has a support network for quadratic equations. I didn't have a support network for three bruised ribs.

I'm not saying his way is soft. I'm saying my way was stupid.

3. "That hurt my feelings."

In my world, "feelings" was a word for women. Men had opinions, not feelings. If someone said something that bothered you, you either ignored it or handled it later in a way that didn't involve the word "hurt."

Anthony told his friend last week: "When you didn't invite me, it hurt my feelings." His friend apologized. They played video games an hour later. Conflict: identified, named, resolved.

You know how my generation resolved conflict? We didn't talk to the person for six months and then pretended nothing happened at a barbecue. That's not resolution. That's just procrastination with sausage.

4. "I love you."

My father said "I love you" to me twice. Once at my wedding. Once on his deathbed. Both times it sounded like a foreign language in his mouth—technically correct but clearly unpracticed.

Anthony says it to me every time he leaves my house. "Love you, Pop." Casual. Easy. Like it costs nothing.

It costs nothing. Turns out it was always free and we just never spent it.

“It costs nothing. Turns out it was always free and we just never spent it.” Click to tweet →

5. "I don't know."

Men in my generation knew everything. Ask us about anything—politics, plumbing, the meaning of life—and we'd give you an answer. Confident. Definitive. Possibly wrong, but delivered with authority, which to us was the same as being right.

Anthony says "I don't know" constantly. And then he looks it up. He's not embarrassed by not knowing. He treats ignorance as temporary, not shameful.

Meanwhile, I've been confidently wrong about at least forty things that a five-second internet search could have fixed. But admitting you don't know something? In Newark, in the '90s? That was weakness. And weakness was the one thing we couldn't afford.

What I'm Learning:

Anthony isn't soft. That's what I want the men my age to hear. The kid does jiu-jitsu. He speaks up in class. He stood up to a bully last year—not with fists, with words, in front of a teacher, on the record. That takes a kind of courage my generation never practiced.

He's not soft. He's fluent. He speaks a language of emotions that I'm learning at fifty-five the way some people learn Italian on vacation—slowly, badly, with a lot of hand gestures.

Last week he asked me how I was doing. Not "how are you"—the greeting. "How are you doing, Pop? Like, really."

I said, "I'm good, kid."

He waited.

"I'm...I don't know. I miss the job sometimes. I don't know what to do with the quiet."

He said, "That makes sense, Pop. The quiet is weird at first."

At first. Like it's a phase. Like there's something after it. Like a fourteen-year-old knows something about navigating silence that a fifty-five-year-old union electrician is just now figuring out.

He probably does.

I'm listening.