It is a strange existence that we live on this planet. We live our lives while working at some hopefully significant occupation and raise our children who will in their time raise their children while working at an occupation that hopefully makes them happy. I think that for the vast majority of us, we want our children to be more successful than we have been. Well, except for the very successful that traded a life for success and wish their children are just happy. I am not sure if my parents were happy with the life that I carved out for myself. I hope that they were, but I suppose that my happiness is the only real measure of success.
Just so they know I am really proud of the lives that my kids have made for themselves and the success that they have. They are definitely more successful than I was in their jobs, and ultimately they are the only ones that can judge how happy they are at the close of life.
Gee, that sounds happy. No, I am not going to die tomorrow or anytime soon if I have any input. I am just in an introspective mood tonight and have been for the better part of today. I have been thinking of my Gram today because I put significant dates on the new calendar last night. She passed away in October 1987 and I often think about her and the wacky things that she would do. I suppose that I am trying to pattern my grand parenting skills based on her model. She was the only grandparent that I knew, so I suppose she could have been a serial murderer, a con artist, bank robber or a member of parliament and I would still have loved her. Well, not if she were a Conservative member of parliament.
When I was about twenty, Gram and I were spending some time together (probably digging out a tree stump) and I asked her a question that I had been wondering about for a while. I said “Gram, you have lived for more than a few years and have seen quite a few things. Since you were born, they have invented the airplane, automobile, radio, cornflakes and instant coffee (breakfast), television, pez, penicillin, the yo-yo and bubble gum, nylon, the first canned beer, TV, the helicopter, the hula-hoop, cured polio, the ballpoint pen, slinky and silly putty, the dialysis machine, the atom bomb, transistors, Teflon, the helicopter, the pacemaker, computers, the artificial heart, bar codes and in my mind the greatest invention…me. You were born in a more or less rural world of the horse and buggy and now you live in a world of cars and planes, what do you think of all the changes?”
She looked up at me and said ”You live and things change. Lucky for us they change slowly enough for us to deal with it.”
I just smiled, and we went back to work. I have a feeling that in fifteen or twenty years, Hurricane and Tornado will come up to me and say “Poppa, you have lived more than a few years and have seen quite a few things. Since you were born they have made trips into space a regular occurrence, most disease have been cured, everyone has access to the WWW, they can operate and not leave scars, music has gone from records to tapes to CD’s and now it is digital. Everyone have cellphones that are mini computers, there are over eight billion people on the planet driving electric cars that talk to them. What do you think of all the changes during your life?”
I will look at them and say “You live and things change. Lucky for us they change slowly enough for us to deal with it. Now, let’s get back to work.”
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