These are nervous days for the parents of new kindergarten and college students. Both student types are headed into new worlds populated by new people and influences beyond parental control. It is a world far more complicated than the one their parents knew when they headed into school. Platte County is insulated a bit in the geographic middle of the United States, but world events still wash over us.
I dropped my youngest off at MU last week. We carried and carted her things into a dorm room, not her first college class as a transfer student, but her first dorm. I could look out her window across the street to the dorm where I spent my first college year. Life goes in funny circles sometimes.
Bill Graham
I could swear it was just a few years back when I was taking her to kindergarten at a school in Platte City, a building gone now. Her toddler years passed so quickly. Now it’s the college years.
Parents wonder, whether at the doors to kindergarten or college, what kind of world will their young ones find when they start exploring. That’s another reason why some of us are nervous as August gives way to September and a new school year.
The West is either on fire or bone dry this summer while epic floods are striking elsewhere, thanks to climate change. Many of us are once again wearing masks in public places because COVID-19 via the delta variant is making a ruthless return, especially among the unvaccinated willing to toss science into the trash. A nation politically divided last year feels like more so this autumn. How that affects Platte County is that people don’t talk as much because trust is thin. Ugly emotions and ideas may be bubbling beneath the surface. All this mistrust under the current shadow of an Afghanistan tragedy 20 years long with blame too complicated for anyone to clearly explain.
My generation as youngsters watched the Vietnam War and the protests the conflict triggered on the 6 o’clock national news, with three networks to choose from. Miss it at 6 and you missed it. I watched the choppers leave the embassy roof in Saigon a couple of times while in college, live and then on the evening news. Today’s college students can watch such depressing scenes in Kabul over and over on TV cable news or catch it at will later online. That does nothing to boost morale among young people or their parents.
But like the Platte Countians who had to pick up the pieces and move forward after the Civil War, living on the edge of the Dust Bowl through the Great Depression, witnessing two world wars, and burying regrettable truths about racial equality and opportunity _ the grownups must move forward and help our children make their way the best we can. All while hoping whatever we have already given them is enough to make them successful.
What now? Home and community can help a lot.
I was lucky. When the world shifted beneath my feet as a young adult, there was a loving and forgiving home to recharge confidence and hope. It was a place where change was slower, acceptance steady. I hope I can do the same for my young ones.
A friendly and positive community helps, too. Such a place nurtures the kindergarteners. Young adults need an encouraging place to start life, perhaps even as a place to return to for living life. That wasn’t Platte County in 1865. We’re not sure if it is in 2021?
The culture wars won’t end soon. But I hope one by one, person by person, we can bring a bit more peace and open mindedness to our homes and towns. That’s how better years arrive, especially for the young ones.
Bill Graham is a long-time commentator on Platte County and its history. He lives in the Platte City area and can be reached at editor@plattecountycitizen.com.