Makenna

Yesterday, I drove my granddaughter to Jacksonville to catch her flight back home to Colorado. Betty and I had picked her up a week earlier in Orlando where she and her volleyball team from Denver had taken part in a national tournament. She spent the week with us here on St. Simons, and we had a wonderful time together.

Makenna is 13 and going into 8th grade this year. She skis in the winter and plays on a club volleyball team. She and her family – the “Team Colorado” that I wrote about last summer – live a long way from here. Her visit allowed me to spend time with her and bridge our generational chasm. I’d like to think we bonded a bit. I do know that this Grandpa came away grateful for our time together. And I think I learned a lot about today’s young people.

I came away impressed by what I call “the replacement generation” coming up. Too frequently we hear older people lament that the young kids today don’t measure up; they criticize how they behave and say they don’t want to work. What I see is youngsters who are busy and confronted with far more opportunities than ever before. They measure up just fine.

As her grandfather, I found Makenna extraordinary, of course, but I suspect that she is like many young people today who are smart and more than capable of coping with the world. My only trepidation is whether our legacy will be worthwhile given the awful state of politics, selfishness, and greed that continue to threaten the very foundations of our nation and time-tested beliefs.