It's You by Jane Porter Page A

don’t have an answer. I’m not the twenty-two-year-old doing that. I’ve been making my own school lunch since sixth grade and doing my own laundry since my freshman year of high school when I needed a clean PE uniform and Mom had back-to-school night and couldn’t do it.
    I started helping grocery shop as soon as I got my driver’s license and I’d even make dinners once or twice a week if Mom worked late, so Dad wouldn’t go hungry.
    I’m not the lazy boy or the entitled girl. My friends aren’t, either. In fact, I don’t really know those young adults he’s talking about. Maybe there is something else wrong. Maybe his grandson has a mood disorder or a learning quirk. Maybe there is more to the story. But right now everyone is waiting for me to say something and I just know I can’t throw his grandson—who I’ve never met, nor will probably ever meet—under the bus.
    “I don’t know,” I say. “But if your daughter, his mother, doesn’t have a problem with it, maybe it’s okay?”
    “It’s never okay to shirk one’s duty,” Harold says fiercely.
    George gestures broadly. “We understood duty. We understoodresponsibility, because we all went through it. We all lost someone. We all struggled. We went hungry. We’re different, and we know we’re different.”
    The men nod and murmur agreement. The tension dissipates, the anger, too, leaving them quiet and reflective.
    A few return to their meals, others begin to rise and walk away. Dad and I remain even after the others are gone. Dad is still silent, though, and I’m silent, waiting for him to say something. But he doesn’t.
    “You all right?” I ask him as seconds stretch into minutes.
    “Just brings back a lot of memories,” he says.
    “But you didn’t serve in that war.”
    “No, but I was a kid during the war and I remember how hard it was on my mom and brothers. Dad was away, you know, serving in the navy. Mom had to raise us three kids on her own.”
    “Grandpa was in the navy?”
    “I’ve told you that.”
    “I didn’t remember.”
    “Your grandfather never talked about it, but then, most men came home from the war and never said a word about what they saw or did. Dad didn’t want to know how Mom got by. It was better to not ask questions. Better to not hear the details. Now my older brothers, they talked about the war. They were teenagers during the war and they both had to get jobs in addition to going to school. Johnny worked in orchards, picking fruit and strawberries, and my older brother Ed did construction work for a local company, since there was a huge housing shortage. Johnny would come home, and then Mom would leave for work. From the time I was a year old, she worked nights at the Southern California Telephone Company. Do I remember that? No. But do I remember my mother always carefully counting her change, and cutting coupons the rest of her life.”
    “That’s why Grandma always used coupons.”
    “She’d lived through the Great Depression. She’d lived with rations. She’d raised children with rations. Instead of being embarrassed that she used coupons, you should have been proud of her. Those coupons allowed her to support her family.”
    “I was young,” I say. “I didn’t know better.”
    “But Harold and Walter are right when they say your generation has different expectations. You were raised comfortably. Your mom and I took pride in being able to provide you with a certain quality of life. If we wanted to take a vacation, we took it. If you wanted to go to dance or cheer camp, we could send you. There is a comfort and affluence now that didn’t exist in the thirties and forties. Being forced to do without is unpleasant, but it won’t kill you—”
    He breaks off as Kathleen Burdick, the Estate’s activities director stops at our table.
    “How are we doing today?” she asks, smiling at Dad and me.
    “Good,” Dad answers, before introducing me.
    “We’ve met,” Kathleen replies. “And