I’ve been following Tom Clausen’s blog recently and he touched on something yesterday that I’ve been thinking about ever since.
What, I wonder, would my parents think about today’s world. What would they think of Donald Trump and MAGA, January 6, Israel and Hamas, rampant immigration, inflation and the cost of living, George Santos and Lauren Boebert, Zelenskyy and Putin, octogenarian Presidents, abortion, global warming, the Supreme Court, mass shootings, gender reassignment, Covid, critical race theory …
My dad died a year before the Twin Towers fell, and Mom a few years before that. I was and am glad they didn’t have to see it. It was enough that they lived through the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, and World War II. They deserved the relatively peaceful years that followed.
They were lifelong Republicans — the good old-fashioned kind. Conservative but rational, responsible, compassionate, well educated. I’m sure they’d have been horrified by what passes for the GOP today. They were, after all, the Greatest Generation.
And what did they think about more personal things. About aging and growing old. I watched them become fragile and gaunt, move more slowly, adopt canes (Mom’s was clear acrylic filled with pink rosebuds). Did they worry about losing each other and living alone? About Medicare, retirement funds, and the rising cost of groceries? Or what the doctor might tell them at their next check-up? Or if they needed new glasses? They never talked about such things. And I never asked. I should have. I could have learned a lot about growing old. After all, I’ve never been this old before and I have a lot of questions.
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Header image: The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor/Wikipedia
Yes
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A good encapsulation of things lots of us old folks must be thinking too. Me for sure.
So many things I’d ask them if they were still here …
I wonder about the same things. My mother, who always dressed up when she went out, even to the supermarket, would have been horrified by how sloppily people dress now–wearing flip-flops on planes, etc. Like you, I wish I had asked more questions, although they weren’t the type of people to express their feelings.
Sounds like my mom. Always the lady. Like your parents, mine didn’t talk about the more personal aspects of aging, and for me to ask would have been nosey and inappropriate. But then, when I was much younger, I wasn’t seeking advice about my own aging.
It wasn’t that long ago. In 1984, I moved from the Northeast to North Carolina. On Saturday morning, I put on jeans (clean), a tee shirt (also clean) and combed my hair to go do my grocery shopping. When I entered the store, I realized… “uh oh… different culture”. The women I saw were dressed up wearing stockings, high heels, dresses and makeup! Culture shock.
Today everybody wears jeans… I was ahead of the times.
If my mother were still alive, she’d still be dressing up to leave the house.
You’re a thinker, Colorado – I believe I’ve made that trite remark before.
But in this world that we’ve made – this terrible but still somehow wonderful existence we’ve forged for ourselves – there is not a preponderance of thinkers. If there were, it would be a different place.
I had been sent away from home before my parents were on the ageing footpath (too disturbing an influence; always fighting with my revered mama) in order that my papa could struggle through his cardiac problems with one less irritant. I knew so little of them and their thinking ..
I like very much to learn of others’ mindworks: we should exchange ’em much, much more.
You’re a good woman.
Aha! So I’ve fooled you into thinking I’m a worthwhile human being! Well, stick around, mate. I’ll have to disabuse you of that. Eventually. Maybe.
Yep, there’s a lot we could learn from our parents. But that’s a lesson we often learn too late.
Never too late for me to become a kind of clone of said mama, alas ! 🙁
Now in the middle of my ninth decade I too am increasingly aware of changes in body and mind. I threw my back out about a month ago and was convinced I would live with constant pain the rest of my life. It slowly got better. Last week, my right eye got hazy with a bright spot that appeared often. I wondered if I’d been hit with a laser or maybe had a retinal tear. Optician said it was a not-uncommon fluctuation in the density of the vitreous humor and that 97% of these resolve within a month.
When famous ballplayer Satchel Page was asked to what he owed his health and longevity, he said he never looked back because “something might be gaining on me.”
Seems at our age there’s always something going on. Or lots of somethings. Hopefully the most annoying ones will pass.
All things must.