Barrel Strength

I admit that I have lived a long time, and yet it seems like nothing until I talk to younger people, who do not remember a time before the Internet.

Recently I saw a photograph I took of my two eldest children, as teenagers, beside my then living parents. The season was March, the day sunny, everyone in sweaters but no coats or hats, and the field behind them still covered in snow, which might have lasted another week. It was 1995. My father, still black-haired at 83, was to live until 2000, five years later. He would be healthy for another two years, until a gentle decline. My mother is still alive, somewhat frailer than in the picture, but mentally still sharp at 91.

It struck me that that photo was 15 years old! I would have been 45 years old when I took it. Forty five is full middle age.  Wait! The realization how old I am only gets  worse.

I recently spoke to a group of 22 year-olds in fourth year university. It means the average person in that class was born in the last year of Reagan. Their infancy was in the regime of George Herbert Walker Bush, their childhood under Bill Clinton, their teen-age under George W. Bush the Younger.

These young people do not remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or the fall of Communism any more than we remember the coronation of George VI, which my mother remembers well, she then in her 18th year, passing down sandwiches to the equally young Bud Drury, later Pierre Trudeau’s minister for everything,  from her hotel window in London before the parade was to pass by.

I suppose if we had the privilege of asking our forebears, some would have remembered Armistice Day in 1918, and others would have remembered bells ringing to mark Trafalgar in 1805, and Waterloo ten years later.  Or the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, which solidified the claim of Protestants to the throne of England.  Or how Bach the elder used to forget his frustrations with the Lepizig town council by going into the organ loft at Thomaskirche to improvize for hours on the organ, and communicate as directlyas a man can with God. Or what Akhnaton said to his priests when he established worship of the one true Sun-God against the polytheism of Egypt. Or how one of our forefathers worked out the bow and arrow, or one of our foremothers who first brewed beer. God bless you, madam!

The next miracle, if you will forgive the word, is how my contemporaries are so much younger than 60-year-olds in my parents’ day. Sure, there were healthy looking parents at sixty and well-preserved people at seventy forty years ago in the year 1970, but they were exceptional. 

If it were not for the face in the mirror, I would not know I was getting older, and even now I suspect some Dorian Gray portrait may exist somewhere, doing the ageing for me, because I feel great!

As in the Academy awards, my thanks to the following list of people and forces:

• my parents, or giving birth to me
• the healthsystem, for dealing with my ailments, few though they be
• for the victors of World War II, for making the world safe for liberal democracy
• for the Cold Warriors, for keeping Communism contained
• for my guardian angel, for looking out for me
• for my children, for confirming me in my life’s choices
• for those who have loved me, for upholding me
• to the Creator of this Universe, for giving us all a place to live
• to my Saviour, for keeping me in mind.

Thanks to you all! I could not have done it without you! Thank you!