They say that every generation is the same. Fathers and mothers alike are disappointed in their sons and daughters, these weird amalgamations of the previous generation. Faces so familiar yet so utterly alien. We respond increasingly well to animation as it gets closer and closer to realistic, but suddenly are disgusted when it is almost but not quite real, when the faces are real, except for something alien and almost indescribable. The uncanny valley. Children are like that sometimes to parents. They look almost like mom, almost like dad, a little bit from an uncle or an aunt, maybe grandma's eyes. It's a miracle and a curse all at once. The worst of parents try to shape their child's life like a marionette, a vicarious second chance. The best try to guide, show the steps that worked for them, hide the sadness when their favorites don't work.
Stalin moved his old mother into an enormous dacha with servants, but she would not leave a single tiny room intended for the maid. He visited her, and once she asked hesitantly what it was exactly that her son had become. I am like the czar was, he explained in the only way that would make sense to her. Better if you'd have stayed in seminary school, she concluded.
A generation later, Stalin's son Yakov died in a German prisoner of war camp, after his father refused to exchange him for a German field marshal, saying simply "I have no son".
The myth of history is that we will not repeat the mistakes of our parents.
Stalin moved his old mother into an enormous dacha with servants, but she would not leave a single tiny room intended for the maid. He visited her, and once she asked hesitantly what it was exactly that her son had become. I am like the czar was, he explained in the only way that would make sense to her. Better if you'd have stayed in seminary school, she concluded.
A generation later, Stalin's son Yakov died in a German prisoner of war camp, after his father refused to exchange him for a German field marshal, saying simply "I have no son".
The myth of history is that we will not repeat the mistakes of our parents.
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