Memories from the 50s

one that is especially alive today

The school hallway in the “new building,” contained four classrooms.

The largest room anchored one end, my Kindergarten classroom where I started school with 39 classmates the first year the “new building” was open, 1954.

Yes, 40 children with one teacher and a teaching assistant.

Our classroom included two little bathroom stalls made of yellow ceramic tiles with toilets just the right size for five-year-olds.

Next to them were stacks of canvas cots for rest time. Mischievous classmates sometimes crawled up onto the cots, from which they could look into the bathrooms stalls and giggle.

I remember being ushered quickly to a cot by the little bathroom stalls and feeling very puzzled and alone while my 39 classmates walked WAY, WAY around me, glancing over with expressions that hurt. They were being escorted to an extra outside recess until I disappeared, the teachers having discovered I had the very contagious, at that time, mumps. It was only one of two times in 7 years I missed school and I still have my little box of 5 silver dollars for almost perfect attendance.

The other classrooms on that hall were two first grades and one second grade, the other second grade classroom across the street in “the old building,” the cornerstone of which was 1897 and just recently demolished.

In the hallway of our brand new building were individual wooden cubbies lining one side, large windows, the other.

Here is my first-grade class and our wonderful, kind teacher, Miss Bateman.

I could tell you even now about these classmates, a few with whom I am still in touch.

This was a happy moment. Well, it was of course requested by the photographer that we smile, but truly, those were happy years and happy days together, even as we went through all the ups and downs of friendships and growing up.

There is, today and in this current time, what I consider an important memory, feeling it as keenly 69 years later as I did then.

First grade is the first year I recall having air raid drills, drills to get us ready “just in case” we were attacked by a country or countries that did not like the United States and wished to harm us.

Things abstract and impossible to truly understand at age 6, but real.

I do not recall exactly how Miss Bateman or other adults exactly explained the reason for the drills.

We the children complied because we could sense the seriousness.

First graders do understand there might be danger ahead, however abstract.

First graders feel, really feel, fear about unknown dangers.

First graders trust adults to take care of them in those times, so follow directions.

One particular air raid drill has stayed with me throughout my life.

Instead of ducking under our desks that day, we were ushered into the hallway and had to duck and cover our heads in front of our own cubby.

Maybe it was something about being with my own things, my coat, my lunchbox, and whatever other belongings I knelt in front of.

Maybe I wondered not only if I, but if my personal things, were going to be ok.

Maybe I wondered if I was going to get home or be separated from my family if something terrible happened.

I do not recall the specifics of what I was wondering.

I do recall the feelings I was feeling.

And here I am, at 75, seeing myself kneeling, hands covering my head, in front of “my cubby.”

Here I am - wondering now.

Wondering with more knowing.

Wondering with more understanding and yet not understanding.

How do we ever think we can understand things this big?

I don’t know today whether we will come through this time in U.S. history the way we did in the 50s.

Words: Oligarchy, Anarchy, Coup, Dictatorship

Actions: Agencies closed, grants stopped, intrusion into our personal information, boards shut down, people on revenge lists, livelihoods of all kinds threatened, and the list goes on in what feels infinite and incomprehensible.

We are in a time that is a brink, an edge, a pivot that either saves democracy or doesn’t.

There is not talk about building fallout shelters as there was in the 50s, one that had me thinking daily about our 10-acre property and where we could build one.

I think back to that 6-year-old and how over time the fears eased. That specific threat did not come true on the soil of my country, this country.

Today, all of that seems mild compared to what we now have to figure out and act on in order to protect our democracy.

Instead of bomb shelters, the talk is about how to protect what feels like a million things that are being attacked by those who sit right here, not across the ocean, but a couple of hours from where I live, supposedly representing me, representing us.

Representing the Constitution and laws of this country.

Except I see that fractured in this moment.

Wondering what is going to happen on so many different levels in relationship with and to our global allies.

Wondering what is going to happen not just internationally but right here, right where I am, where you are right now and with all who are with us and around us – in all the ways we are alike and different.

Wondering how to understand the deep layers of digital attacks and invasions that many do not even know or believe are happening while simply trying to get through a day. They are quietly done without legal or Congressional sanction.

The ever-growing swirl of unfathomable information that is dangerous for this country is tornado like, immensely unsettling and impossible to grasp in all the specifics. Some say gish gallop - throwing out so much information to purposely throw off and overwhelm.

Just as I felt fear and deeply hoped, as deeply as a 6-year-old can hope, for all of us to be safe and for this country to be safe, I feel fear and deeply hope the same today.

I hope, and deep inside of me I do trust, we will surmount the challenges facing us that feel insurmountable, and remain a democratic nation, rebuilding relationships with each other, in communities of beautiful diversity of all kinds, and with our neighbors and allies around the world.

It is and I believe is likely to be a tumultuous time to get there, as it was when at 6 I could not possibly understand what it would take for that to happen. The difference is that now I do, even if not completely.

It takes me. It takes us, the regular people, our voices and actions on behalf of one another.

I must get up from my adult kneeling position of protecting myself and give voice in ways I am called to - writing, calling, serving and being present to this time and to people who need presence without shrinking and without staying as silent as I have been.

I need and want to be a 75-year-old who does what I am called to do, along with millions doing what they are called to do, so the 6-year-olds of today get to live with the freedoms I have known and those that have not yet been fully achieved but for which progress was being made.

And to continue to live with joy, wonder and beauty embedded in each day. I do believe that love is “the greatest of these” of faith, hope and love, and that loving our neighbor does matter, even if and when there is depleting disagreement. It is not always easy.

For this writing, let me end by saying as a white person of privilege that I understand in all the decades between my being 6 and 75 and long before that, that within this country there have been threats, decisions, and actions that have diminished, harmed and killed and continue to diminish, harm and kill, even before these past weeks. And there have been too many times I have remained silent.

My heart tells me that for me, for I can only speak for myself, that silence is no longer acceptable.