Shaking off the Weight of the Daily News…
Remembering what the Brits did while London was being bombed.
SGHolland September 2018
The little corner of the earth that you spend your hours on is trembling, resonating the seismic heaves of a country being torn apart by politics — the smell of winds of war, it seems to me.
Yes, I do watch the news. As my parents listened to the news during World War II and kept their words few while we children were around. I remember the news reels that came between showings of the local Saturday afternoon movies in Media PA. Black and white scenes of marching soldiers and struggling tanks and explosions and bodies carried around on stretchers. The big boys on our road went off to that war. One of those guys with guns, or guys on stretchers might be Freddie, or Tommy from our neighborhood. Joe came back, I remember, because he was fixing a car on Fritz’s driveway, and took off with the monkey wrench in his own car when I told him there was a man coming after me with no clothes on. (true story) That “big boy” roared off in his jalopy with that huge tool in his hand and told me to run right home and tell my mother.
I was told that they caught him “over in Bryn Mawr at a movie theater.” But I have no idea whether they really did.
A lot of scary stuff was going on in our quiet little neighborhood. We were using ration stamps, and saving tin foil. And fat. And coloring margerine with a little poppable capsule of red food dye packaged with that white grease. Fixing and re-fixing tires because they were worn thin — rubber was needed “for the war”. We had black-outs at night because there was an “air raid drill.” I peeked out the blanketed window of my bedroom and watched “search lights” crossing each other in the sky.
Parents kept the usual schedule during those days — we had the usual breakfast, and got ourselves off to school on time. We had lessons at night, and we celebrated birthdays with cakes and candles and games. But when VJ day came, even the most protected kids in our neighborhood felt, viscerally, and with mind-blowing relief, the safety — safety from danger — that had settled on our anxious lives. The adults had parties from house to house up and down the road and the kids used anything at all to pound, drag, beat, or wave as we paraded up and down our road singing Yankee Doodle, and When Johnnie Comes Marching Home, and America the Beautiful, and the Star Spangled Banner.
So, today in 2018, as I catch up on the news, sitting in my grown-up recliner, and see the haggard faces of reporters and citizens and politicians turning from their “show-biz” glamour into faces of fear and anger and anxiety, I feel the same weight, but with a lifetime of reality behind me (not the protected childhood bubble), I wonder what to do.
What, really, does a person do to move along with a responsible spirit and a steady mind?
The Brits went about their business as usual, we were always told, while the airplanes were flying over and dropping bombs. They got up and hid in tunnels when the bombs got close. Then they got up and went to see if they still had a house to live in. And then they brushed their teeth, and put on their clothes and went about their work in as much as a “normal” way as they could muster. A quiet defiance, strung with a thread of HOPE.
America needs to “pull up its socks”. We need to stop reacting and hurting one another in our frenzy. We need to re-prioritize our basic needs list. We need to give up butter, maybe, and put blankets over our windows, and work out the rationing of gas and food. Build victory gardens instead of going on vacation. And look to a time when life will be as we remembered it before the conflict.
That’s why I am walking every day. I’ve been lazy during recent years, thinking an 80 year old needn’t walk every day — after all what am I training for at this age?
Well, it’s time for us to train for tomorrow. We can believe in tomorrow at least. And be ready for the regular chores. And hope for a day when the surprise alarms stop punctuating our days and when the evening news will be about life and goodness, and when our children can feel with us the relief in the air, and the love and the hope.
SGHolland ©2018
