Thoughts on a Summer Day

June, 2009The time was summer, 1964.The place was my parents' green and blooming yard.The speaker was my godfather."How can anyone bring a baby into a world such as this?" he said, glaring over the top of his glasses at me and at the very new baby in my lap.The baby was my son, Peter, my first-born, my gem, the culmination, I then thought, of everything I could want and all that I could be.The time, again, was 1964, not quite two years after the "Cuban missile crisis."  How clearly I remember being a young teacher standing in front of a high school classroom listening to the Principal's announcement over the PA system.  He was giving directions for evacuation of the school and the community in the event of a nearby strike of an atomic bomb.We all knew, despite the carefully articulated plan, that there would be no place to go.It was only months after President Kennedy's assassination.  I was standing in front of a classroom when that announcement came over the PA system, too.Nonetheless, when my godfather threw his bitter words at me, I bent over my baby and thought, fiercely,  It's all right.  Everything is going to be all right.  I'll make the world safe for him!The son I folded myself around that summer afternoon is finally "safe," leaving his mother to the perils of "a world such as this."  One of our deepest blessings, I have come to realize, is ignorance of the future.  No one could bear a child, rear a child knowing such brutal illness and death waited.  The fact that Peter's disaster turned out to be a very individual one, not that of a disintegrating world, is irrelevant, though.  My godfather's words stay with me.Was it wrong to bring a baby into the world my godfather condemned?  And are our circumstances today improved or even more terrible than they seemed in 1964?  In 1938, when I was the baby, my parents were struggling out of the Great Depression, an experience that damaged my father deeply.  And, of course, the devastation of World War II lay in wait.  Sometimes I stand back and try to guess at a wide-angle view of my years on this planet, and I wonder if they will be seen, finally, as part of an ever-more-rapid slide into destruction.When I was in my mid-twenties, I ignored the threat of nuclear devastation and conceived and bore my allotment of two children.  Now I find myself with the rather astonishing inheritance of eight blood grandchildren.  (I'm not counting the steps or the step-steps or the grandchildren acquired through former foster children and exchange students.)  My godfather, for all his pessimism, could not even have imagined the uncertain future waiting for those grandchildren today.My grandchildren are sheltered, clothed, nourished, educated, loved . . . every one of them.  They were born into a landscape where, at least for today, no bombs are falling.  And despite living on the prairies of the Upper Midwest and having to dodge the occasional tornado they are relatively safe from natural disasters, too.But too many other children are without shelter, clothing, nourishment, education, love for any of us to feel safe.  Too many live with bombs falling and guns exploding.  Too many live with natural disasters threatening, many of which are not so "natural," after all.Sometimes I can't help but despair at the meager change achieved by generations of well-meaning, hard-working, impassioned people.  And this despite the fact that I belong to a church focused vibrantly on peace and justice.  Despite the fact, too, that I know people connected with no church at all who march for peace and make daily efforts to preserve our earth and reach out to the poor with steadfast and caring hands.  And I have done my own small share of caring, even of marching, though something about standing about with people carrying signs always makes me think of preaching to the choir.Through it all, though, my godfather's sardonic voice never leaves me.He blamed me for bringing a child into a world I had so little control over.  And I have learned what I did not understand that day in my parents' sunny yard, that lack of control can be absolute.  And I have learned, too, to endure powerlessness.I am a children's writer.  It is a small task, writing these careful books, though on many days it feels a holy one.  Still, I cannot pretend that anything I write will change the world my young readers inherit.   And I object strenuously to the idea of passing on to them the good intentions we adults have long since set aside.  As though if we teach them to desire peace, to protect our ailing world, to care for the needy, we have no further responsibility for achieving these goals ourselves.I remember other words my godfather spoke when I was even younger, dark thoughts about the meaninglessness of his own life—he was a doctor, of his own passions—he was a photographer and a Lincoln historian.  And I remember thinking with the sharp intolerance of adolescence, "That's just forty-year-old stuff.  You have no right to say it to me!"  Though I recognized what he said as his own truth.I have never wanted any of it to be my truth, though.  What I have wanted was simply to step out into my life and to prove him wrong.Nearly fifty years later, I can offer little evidence that he was.  As far around me as I can see, the world reels in disarray.Nonetheless, as far around me as I can see, that same world is, once more, green and blooming.Just for today, maybe green and blooming is enough.Perhaps tomorrow I will have gathered strength to face into the disarray again . . . for my grandchildren.