It’s a gloomy morning. The first we’ve had since leaving home, and the news matches the skies as I read that Putin’s readied his nuclear “deterrent” forces. I read that and can barely process the consequences, resetting my mind to growing up under the threat and promise of mutually assured destruction like it made sense.
I’m disappointed and horrified and saddened that all the kids today who, at the most had to worry about distant wars and close up crime, North Korea reaching Alaska with a nuclear missile – who thought the world might wait to end till Australia finished burning and the seas rose – get to be reminded that no, we’re actually capable of ending it all a good deal faster as the spector of nuclear war looms back out of invisibility, casting a pall across everything once again.
I remember growing up and thinking that absolutely nothing mattered, no grade, no girl, no college application, no skill, no future. Why did my parents keep bugging me because THEIR generation had guaranteed it all could be stolen away in an instant. If Reagan or Gorbachev lost their temper or even just their marbles, we Lived close enough to Washington DC that we might never even know it.
The change of the sense of threat and the possibility of having a FUTURE was something I couldn’t completely comprehend when everything changed. I was 16 when the Cold War ended, and believe it or not, 16 year-old boys are NOT the best judges of world events!
Now I sort of shudder and my heart pounds whenever my phone buzzes with a Breaking News alert. Maybe I’ll turn it off. Down here in rural Georgia, we could legitimately miss events till the flash from Fort Gordon hit us.
Ah, the parents rise, and with them the day and more immediate concerns press back in.
