I know I just posted yesterday but I was watching the news last night – North Korea tested yet another missle. This is scary. It has prompted me to post again today.
Our world is in chaos right now – there is a nut in North Korea who has built himself a giant gun and a cowboy in Washington who already had one. Both of these clowns potentially have a trigger finger. It’s terrifying. It’s also nothing new. I was growing up in Calgary in the 1960’s in the midst of the Cold War – it was terrifying too, I was just viewing it from a different vantage.
I was a chubby little girl with little athletic ability and even less confidence. I was stuck on my mother in the fashion of a joey kangaroo -I would have lived in her pocket if I could have fit. The separation anxiety I felt when it was time to go to school was palpable. I’d walk down the hill, my stomach in a knot, my heart in my throat and count the minutes until I could walk home again. The days felt long.
My world was all about home and the prairie, crocuses and puppies, bedtime stories and lullabies my Dad would sing when he was home. I shared a bedroom with my two sisters and counted sleeps to Christmas and my birthday. Life was complicated in a simple, child like fashion and I worried – a lot.
I believe Calgary was on some sort of strategic air force path in the 1960s. There were air raid sirens hoisted above the city in several locations back in the day. We had air raid drills in school like kids on the coast today practice diving under their desks in event of an earthquake. Our mission during the drill was to be able to make it home before the siren stopped blaring. If we weren’t home at the moment silence hit we were to make our way into an assigned basement and wait.
I could generally walk to school, down hill, in ten or fifteen minutes. My walk back home was up hill and always took considerably longer. I can still feel the burn in my chest as I write this.
The sirens would wind up – a loud slow howl. The drum of my heart was loud in my ears before my run began. We were dismissed from school in an orderly fashion, early grades first. I was out of breath before my feet hit the sidewalk and began their frantic run for home. Up hill. As fast as I could go. Alone, while my classmates zoomed past. Drill after drill, week after week, we practiced making our way home – to safety – to mom.
I could never make it. As fast as those chubby legs could run, with all the effort that little girl could muster, I could only get as far as Marylin Payne’s house. I had to make my way into the Payne’s basement, a block and a half from the security of home – almost within sight and around the world from my mother.
Just recalling the panic in that little girl’s heart makes my hands shake today.
My mother must have been feeling equally anxious at the time. The thought of her eldest child waiting out the nuclear winter in Marylin Payne’s basement would have been stressful. I’m betting she lost as much sleep over the prospect as I did – if not more.
Times were scary – we were preparing ourselves for disasters based on the experience of parents who had recently lived through the Second World War. The tactics for survival were based on the technology of bombs dropped on specific targets from war planes speckling the skies. I don’t think we had a handle on the complete devastation a nuclear bomb would have — there was no way any of those children could run themselves to safety. That chubby little girl was panicked for nothing. That mother was worried about something that could never be survived.
All of this draws a comparison to the world we are living in today. The stress we feel when North Korea launches another missile – the implications of trajectory and reach – nuclear codes in the hands of a cowboy – sneaks into our day to day, into our children and grandchildren’s dreams (nightmares). We can’t help but notice. We can’t help but feel. The world is in chaos – but the news isn’t new.
Where my mother brought her experience of living through a war that could be survived with enough preparation and powdered milk, I am bringing a different perspective to the table. That little girl who was terrified every time the sirens howled grew up to be a grandmother who wants to save her grandchildren from the same terror.
We have no control over those clowns with their fingers on the trigger but we can control how we live our lives – we can control the stress we are inadvertently dipping our children in. Our worries fix nothing – our fear only limits our joy.