A Parents Weekend Dinner

When my husband and I went to our first Parents’ weekend at Lehigh we went to dinner with her roommate, one of her new friends, and that friend’s parents. My daughter’s roommate as well as the other friend grew up in very affluent towns in Westchester--- towns known for their highly rated school systems and liberal political views.

But when we met the  parents of the friend for the first time, they were a bit too excited to meet our acquaintance.

It seemed that these parents had just returned from visiting their older daughter for her Parent’s Weekend. That daughter attended the University of Michigan where the student body was and is much more diverse than that of Lehigh.

And the parents told us the following story:Their U of M daughter had arranged for a dinner with her two roommates and their parents. And the daughter felt obliged to give them a little inside information before arriving at the restaurant. The daughter feared some awkwardness and sought to diffuse it. It seemed that one of the roommates’ parents was divorced and the two parents did not get along well as the Dad remarried a much younger woman who was nearly the same age of the daughter. Another of the roommates was bi-racial: the Mom was Japanese and the Dad was African-American. And the third set of parents was gay—two Dads and no Mom.

So while the two parents from the liberal town in Westchester had prided themselves on being liberal minded—this was a bit too much diversity sitting all at one dinner table --even for them. Making certain that every word uttered was politically correct was positively exhausting.

And I laughed and said No wonder you exhaled upon our introduction.

I grew up in a world where people were put into boxes based on their race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. There was little integration.

But the world has changed.

And while I think this change has been for the better and I applaud the way my children and their generation see the world as a blend and not a box, there was comfort in the boxes. You always knew which end was up. And the box was clearly marked: fragile or open with care.