Lift Up Your Hearts!

In Forgetting the Unforgettable, I remarked on how ordinary were my diary entries when the Berlin Wall was breached.  In a subsequent comment, Stephan mentioned that he barely remembers the event, despite living so close to Germany.

Soon thereafter, while taking my customary walk and listening to a history lecture on my trusty mp3 player, I was reminded that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when I was the age Stephan was when the Wall fell.  I have no memory of the event whatsoever, nor of any particular anxiety because of the imminent threat of nuclear war.  We had "air raid drills" in our elementary school, but that was nothing new; they were a normal part of school, like the equally-frequent fire drills.  If the adults in my life worried about the situation, none of that filtered down to me.  My life comprised surviving fifth grade, playing with my friends, and enjoying my new baby brother.

Curious, I delved into the journals that my father had kept, hoping there would be entries for October 1962, and there were.  I looked forward to hearing how he and my mother had dealt with the fears that, I'm told, caused families eating breakfast to wonder if they'd still be alive at dinnertime.

He had written absolutely nothing.

The closest thing to a political comment came on November 6:  "This was election day, and therefore a holiday.  We voted a little before 9 a.m....Most of the evening was spent in front of the television set watching election returns."  No mention of the results, nor how he felt about them.

As for the rest, he wrote a wonderful chronicle of everyday life.  He wrote about the speed-reading class he was taking in the evenings, the meetings of the Beukendaal Volunteer Fire Department (almost 50 years later, it's still volunteer, and still uses yellow trucks!), and a little about his job (not much, since much of that was Classified).  He noted my three-year-old brother's reaction to his smallpox vaccination ("Nothing serious, just a little fever that makes it obvious he is not feeling real well"), and my reaction to my first Civic Music Concert ("I think Linda truly enjoyed it.  I am sure part of her enjoyment came from the fact that she went somewhere new and part from the fact that she stayed up late.  On the other hand, she has always liked classical music, and has recently been exposed to The Fire Bird Suite^* in school.").  He chronicled Saturday errands in town with his son, a visit to Rochester to see his father ("All three children behaved beautifully!"), and a Columbus Day holiday venture in which he took my Girl Scout troop climbing in the Adirondack Mountains ("All the troubles of going up were forgotten on the top and the girls were soon busy admiring the view and eating lunch in that order.  They were all thrilled at being on top and for many it was a new experience....Just as we were almost packed up to leave, the skies opened up and we got rained on....At least they know why we said to bring a change of clothes."), and Hallowe'en ("Linda's costume this year was a parking meter.  She made a box that covered her head with an opening in front and a rotating disc in the opening that indicated the time left on the meter.  She wore the aluminum-colored shirt and gray slacks that she wore last year as her suit of armor....[My brother] wore the clown suit that Lynn made for Linda at about that age.").  He spoke of raking leaves, turning the compost heap, and planting bulbs, of making applesauce from two bushels of apples we had picked ourselves at a cost of $3.50, and of the unusually warm weather (October 18: "We still have not had a killing frost.").  There were always repairs to be made:  to the car, to the baby seat, to the radio ("mostly by replacing a tube"), and of course there were school meetings ("Social Studies...tries to be as timely as possible, especially with regard to government.  'A big part of 5th grade is getting the children interested in something other than themselves.'").  There were lovely evenings by the fire, with popcorn and games, and visits to and from friends and neighbors.

But there was no politics.  It hard to imagine that the subject did not come with their friends across the bridge table, but if it did, I did not hear it—and I did eavesdrop from time to time.  I think back then it was considered more important to protect children from the harsher realities of life, and we weren't immersed, as children are today, in a sea of unrelenting media coverage.  Those were also the days when politics, religion, and one's ailments were not considered suitable topics for general conversation. 

My parents were both intelligent and well-educated folks, and my father especially loved history.   But of their political views they said little, and I'm not all that sorry for it.  They believed so strongly in the secret ballot that they almost never revealed for whom they had voted.

Later in life, however, my father did make one memorable political statement that expresses both the climate of the times and his own personality.  "They told me," he intoned, "that if I voted for Mr. Goldwater for president, our country would become mired in a war in Vietnam.  Well, I did vote for Mr. Goldwater, and sure enough it came to pass, just as they had said."