When pondering how to contribute to this special issue, the author was startled to realize that their career, the journal's history, and the development of the discipline--rhetoric and composition/writing studies (RCWS)--had run in parallel for 50 years. This essay tells a story of how "generation" came to matter in rhetoric and composition/writing studies; analyzes and advocates for "generation" as a lens through which to examine disciplinary studies and activities; and considers how people can productively engage in generational relations between individuals and groups. It adopts a framework of "hospitality" (adapted from Richard and Janis Haswell) to develop a concept of "cross-generational relations" as an aspirational category. An ethic of hospitality is proposed to facilitate respectful, productive relations among generational groups, which recognize and enact interdependence but allow for a wide range of stances and strategies of interaction in action and scholarly discourse.