At my age sheltering in place has locked me down with my middle- aged daughter and her rather precocious son - my 10-year old grandson. As a poster child for the corona virus resulting in fatality, I have also been forced to be extra cautious in my interactions with others. Try telling a 10-year old he cannot play outside with his friends in the mobile home park in which we reside. That makes me the resented in place chief of this family unit while making Bubba the most irritating child in chief of the family unit. Simply stated, 10 year old kids are hard pressed to shelter in place and since the school year ended with his home schooling, his volume level is stuck on high LOL.
And now we are slowly reopening society, North Carolina is seeing a spike in coronavirus infections, but the snowball is rolling down hill and in no way will it slow down
With that as a backdrop, I have been reflecting on a life winding down as I circle the drain. The progress I was so proud of in the sixties has been shown to be woefully inadequate and incomplete in the wake of events recently. As hard as we worked to get it right, it took a perfect storm of circumstances to show there is still work to be done. We had eight years of the first black president in our history followed by nearly four years that saw our current president try to eliminate the previous eight years from our memory. The current president has worked to divide the American populace along largely racial lines while at the same time blaming his predecessor for the division.
My time has passed - there is little left for me to do and so the mantle has been passed to newer generations. They will be the ones that push the racial divide off the cliff, hopefully for the last time. I read the thoughts and writings of Sanjannah, my young teen-age blogging compatriot in India, and I am heartened by her attitudes and her willingness to tackle the problem. I see the same thing here in this country
That is what the lockdown had done to/for me. It has made me reflective and upbeat about the future and I think maybe my life wasn't wasted - maybe it really did matter.
Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Conrad, Ramana.
Please be sure to check my blogging compatriots comments - and I'll see ya next week, same shack time and same shack channel.
Not even close to wasted fellow geezer. Like I said in my piece, this twilight of life is turning out to be pretty interesting and it's just warming up! I look at my kids and their generation of friends and I think we set the stage pretty well. Like Sanjana, I think they have what it takes.
ReplyDeleteTo start with, I want to thank you for your faith in me and my writing! It means more than you know. And for what it's worth, I am deeply inspired by every single one of the members of this blogging team! All of you have had such interesting lives and wonderful values, and I am honoured to have met you :) also, wonderful post as always!
ReplyDeleteOur bodies may not cooperate but, our minds still function well enough for posts like this to appear. I do not have any grand children but, I can well imagine what it must be like to be cooped up with a ten year old school going child in a mobile home. Yet, you appear to have weathered the storm well and knowing you as I do, there are more to come that you will too.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Conrad, I seriously doubt that our generation will see any major change in the racism phenomenon. A major turning point has indeed been reached but, it will be in the future generation's time that it will be eliminated if at all. Major change in our education system and values will have to take place to make that happen.
Beatles, God bless them for what they were.