RICHARDSON: Curses and blessings

I'm sure you've heard of the Generational Curse. It does seem to be true in many cases. Some folks can't seem to rise out of their circumstances from one generation to the next for whatever reasons. Some equate it to money or the lack of resources. I look at it differently.

My mother didn't have a lot of money, if any at all. She didn't leave me a tidy nest egg, but she did give me generational blessings. First, she was my mother, not my friend. She made it clear that if I wanted something, I would have to earn it. I started working as soon as I could get a work permit.

Not once did she ever give me a ride to work. I had limited modes of transportation — my two feet and a bicycle. Most times I used my two feet.

Not once did she ask me what my work schedule was, nor did she have to remind me to be on time. And she never took a dime from my meager checks. It was mine to spend or save as I pleased. I soon learned how to spread it over until the next pay period.

When I wanted to buy a motorcycle, I know it scared her to death, but she didn't stop me. And this was when helmets were optional. That 160 cc Honda took me everywhere, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I didn't get the motorcycle until I was a junior in high school. I did a lot of walking before then.

I know times were different 50 years ago. I didn't worry — and I guess neither did my mother — about someone carting me away. I was a bit big to be carted away without a fight. Wherever I went, she had an uncanny knack for knowing where I was and what I was doing. She had spies everywhere. Not bad for a woman who worked the graveyard shift during all of my childhood.

Yes, she gave me the generational blessing of the appreciation for education. While she loved "Perry Mason" and "Gunsmoke" (and I did, too), we would also watch Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom." I can still watch hours of National Geographic Television or the Discovery Channel.

I was hooked on news early. I guess I can say this without bias. There has been no better journalist in the world than Walter Cronkite. He gave you just the facts, Jack, but he was human. I have an instant replay in my head from Nov. 22, 1963, when the most trusted journalist in America fought through his emotions to tell us that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. I was in the seventh grade, 52 years ago.

I didn't know how well my mother kept up with the world around her. I thought, foolishly, for a time, that my superior intellect could run rings around her. I couldn't come close, and once I realized that, the generational blessings really started to flow.

Are there generational curses? Certainly, but they are self-imposed handcuffs that we put on our children's dreams. We tell them they can be anything, but we don't tell them — no, make them — do the hard work necessary to make those dreams come true.

Parents are chumping out, particularly in the African American community. Yep. I said it. Get mad at me. I hope you get mad enough to turn those generational curses into generational blessings. I'm sick and tired of parents standing in the way of their children's success. I'm tired of parents living for the weekend and forgetting about five years from now, 10 years from now.

I'm tired of reading about 14-year-old children being gunned down in their own homes because some parent didn't do their job. If you've got a gang-banger living in your home, you owe it to the rest of your family to remove the cancer. Amputation is difficult, but it's done so the rest of the body can survive.

I won't get into it here, but I'm talking about something I know about. I've lived it. I've done it. But in order to pass on generational blessings to others, difficult choices have to be made and sometimes those choices are the difference between life and death.

I'm forever grateful for the generational blessings my mother gave to me, and for a while I was the horse brought to water without the brains to drink. The Stuckey genes finally kicked the Richardson genes to the curb and I've been lapping it up ever since.

Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 8:16 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Curses and blessings ."