When Harry met Meghan
This is an interesting love story. Immensely contemporary. It’s about all the conflicts that we face today — inter-generational, racism, traditional behavior versus today’s desired behavior, gossip versus truth, opinions versus feelings.
The stars of these conflicts are no less than Prince Harry, the youngest son of Charles and Diana, and Meghan Markle, the pretty girl we first saw on the American TV series Suits.
Two shining stars, one from England and the other from Hollywood. I forgot another hidden conflict between the Brits and Americans. Britain was the source of the people who changed their accents and values to become today’s Americans.
It’s a bit complex to write about but let’s begin with inter-generational: I love Harry’s relationship with Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, who is his beloved grandmother. On James Corden’s show (I watch James Corden on TV because he reminds me of my son), Harry narrates that his grandmother sent him a waffle maker for Christmas. He describes how his son Archie loves to eat waffles with yoghurt and berries and other things on it.
I, another grandmother, thought that was very sweet. It presented the Queen as a normal granny who bought for her grandson what he wanted for Christmas. She wasn’t the woman wearing a suit with matching hat that one had to curtsy to. She was just plain “Granny.” Her grandson and his son weren’t the Prince and his baby either. They were just ordinary folk, having breakfast. They get along pretty well and love each other very much.
I think God has sent us Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to move us all into solving our differences. They lead this movement for the world to solve its problems with race, tradition, what we are told to think and how we feel.
Then there’s the relationship between Charles and Harry, which it seems is not working so well now, especially after Harry’s frankness during Oprah’s interview.
But here we have to toss in the full story of Charles, Diana and Camilla, because this had tremendous influence on the boys. You see watching the interview that Harry loves his father but he also loves and misses his mother still. He feels her presence in this mix of misunderstanding made more complicated by the media.
It’s like watching someone in the process of inventing a salad. His relationship with his grandparents is the lettuce. That’s the bedrock. I would characterize him, Meghan, Archie and the little one coming as the dressing. The key to flavor for the leaves.
But Charles, Diana and Camilla are the other ingredients. How did they genuinely feel about their relationships and what was its effect on them? Were there no hard feelings? Who was to blame? Did they even bother to think this out?
When I left my husband a thousand years ago, I met a psychiatrist at a dinner who in conversation said that if I had no plans of going back, I should make sure my children understand that. I followed her advice.
My children got the impression that I never said anything nice about their father. I know that to be true because if I said something nice, I was afraid they would think we might get back together again. Do you think it ended there? My daughters are now all over 50. I am still accused of never having said anything nice about their father. The feelings that such situations create just never die. Unlike old soldiers, they don’t even fade away.
The contribution of Charles, Diana and Camilla are immense influences but not so obvious as the traditional behavior values of the Royalty, which Harry and Meghan refer to as a trap. That is the biggest item in question here. The rules that tell them how they should behave versus the sincerity with which Harry and Meghan want to behave. Meghan said it well. The “firm” does not consider feelings.
Today, everyone outside the Royalty considers feelings. Okay, not everyone. The older ones consider traditional values. The younger ones consider feelings. That’s another generational gap.
Little Archie is the same color as his dad. What if the little girl they are expecting takes on her mother’s coloring? That brings us to the question of racism. That’s a much bigger question than I am willing to tackle now.
But let’s look at what’s happening in America right now. The racist battle between black and white is not over and now they are shooting Asians. Some of the whites are now against us. Where once we thought that America was a melting pot of races, now we find that it is not, that in the pot the ingredients are not stewing with each other to create a different flavored race, they are fighting.
I think God has sent us Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to move us all into solving our differences. They lead this movement for the world to solve its problems with race, tradition, what we are told to think and how we feel. This will play the role that Woodstock did in the ’70s. It will be the beginning of worldwide topsy-turvy-ness that will change all the values that finally need to be changed.
Banner photo via AFP