One of my favorite publications is The Week, in part because it demonstrates the value of newspapers and magazines, which are the primary sources for its content and have been the primary sources for my income over the past two decades. I also love The Week because it allows me to seem far more well-read than I am. The magazine’s tagline is “All you need to know about everything that matters,” and that’s an accurate description. For those unfamiliar with the magazine, it’s essentially a compilation of newspaper and magazine excerpts-news stories as well as op-ed pieces-covering the previous week’s top national and international issues and events. The Week also covers business, arts, entertainment, and even my favorite guilty pleasure, celebrity gossip (“Three-year-old Suri Cruise refuses to eat unless she can use chopsticks”). The editor’s letter is usually a highlight, and such was the case for the June 5 issue, when editor-in-chief William Falk wrote about the limits of a parent’s power. With Father’s Day in mind, I’ve figuratively and literally taken a page from The Week (a third of a page, actually) and reprinted Falk’s letter below. -LARRY BEAN
It would be reasonable to assume that a declining old fogy such as myself-with my 50-something body creaking and wheezing like a car with fading paint, fins, and a clogged carburetor-would be far more vulnerable to swine flu than my bright-eyed teenage daughters. Not so. Two-thirds of the 5,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. thus far, the Centers for Disease Control revealed last week, have struck people between the ages of 5 and 24. Less than 1 percent of those infected were over 65. What gives? Many older people, blood studies show, have partial immunity to the swine variant because of a lifetime of exposure to similar flu viruses. The epidemiological quirk may be counterintuitive, but from my perspective as a parent, not so surprising: Every day I am reminded how vulnerable the young are to hazards to which, due to the inoculation provided by decades of hard experience, I am now immune.
The mean-spirited judgment of others is deeply wounding when you’re 13; at 54, not so much. At 17, the outrageous unfairness of life is not a simple reality, but the source of recurring anger and angst. Into your 30s, everyday blunders keep you up nights, squirming with humiliation and self-doubt. Over time, repeated exposure to these psychic pathogens renders them less toxic; you learn to maintain your equilibrium. What you can’t do, unfortunately, is distill that process into a vaccine to administer to your children. Only through their own mistakes and heartache do they develop antibodies of their own. It is the hardest thing about being a parent, watching your children struggle and suffer, learning what you already know but cannot, for the life of you, pass on.
WILLIAM FALK
The Week, June 5, 2009
