The Baby Boomer Generation Gap
The burgeoning genre of Baby Boomer Lit fascinates me. I
love the stories authors are telling about the challenges confronting this
generation as we face our mortality but still want to squeeze more out of life.
Often forgotten, however, is that technically, baby boomers
represent (mostly Americans) born between 1946 and 1964. That’s a span of
eighteen years, for those of you good with math or who happen to have a
calculator handy. So theoretically, two generations could be contained within
this one moniker: two generations with very different goals and ideals.
I noticed this “gap” as a teenager. My older brother and his
friends (born between 1955 and 1957) seemed to be living on a completely
separate plane from me (1961) and my younger brother (1963). Even though the
span between our ages is not that long, his lifestyle and his interests were
not ours. He wanted to go to Woodstock. I wanted to go to a Warren Zevon
concert. I partied with my friends and ended up sipping iced tea in the pool.
He partied with his friends and ended up…well, there’s a lot he doesn’t
remember from back then.
So when I began to write the story that would become The
Joke’s on Me, it seemed natural to pit two Baby Boomer sisters, born fourteen
years apart, against each other. Jude, the elder Goldberg sibling, at seventeen
puts flowers in her hair and runs off to San Francisco with a rock band. She
gets married barefooted on the beach. She lives in a commune and becomes an
early feminist, Gloria Steinem’s home phone number one of her most prized
possessions. Frankie, the menopause baby, was three when her pretty hippie
sister took off for good. She grew up cynical, caustic, and always ready to
make fun of her sister’s freewheeling generation, which forms the meat of her Hollywood
stand-up comic act.
Ironically, the two end up back in their mother’s bed-and-breakfast
in the town of Woodstock (actually about forty-three miles from the site of the
original concert at Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York), spent from personal
disappointments. Following Jude’s fourth divorce, she’s returned to help Mom
run the business. Frankie’s Hollywood life falls apart with an exclamation
point when she can’t find work and her bungalow rides a mudslide into the Pacific,
leaving her only the clothes on her back and a red Corvette convertible of
questionable ownership.
Although Frankie and Jude were born fourteen years apart
into essentially different families and never had much of a relationship, the
sisters both face common baby boomer experiences. What should they do about Mom,
who has a stroke and is showing signs of Alzheimer’s? How, with their
histories, can they have any credibility taking a hard line on drugs and
alcohol with Jude’s eighteen-year-old son? And are new relationships worth the
bother, even if they’re with old flames?
Writing about these issues is a way of taking ownership of
them. And hopefully, helping others along the way, whether that’s making them
feel less alone with their problems, giving them a needed break from them, or
just sharing a good laugh or cry, depending.
About the Author
Laurie Boris is a freelance writer, editor, proofreader, and
former graphic designer. She has been writing fiction for over twenty-five
years and is the award-winning author of three novels: The Joke’s on Me, Drawing
Breath, and Don’t Tell Anyone. When not playing with the universe of imaginary
people in her head, she enjoys baseball, cooking, reading, and helping aspiring
novelists as a contributing writer and editor for IndiesUnlimited.com. She
lives in New York’s lovely Hudson Valley.
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