And
now we’ve had a death in our community, and someone in a retirement center is
infected. Son Clint, who continues to work at the paper mill, called last
evening to say we shouldn’t see each other for a while. We agreed. The Boise
son, also working every day, said that one of those big digital reader boards
over the freeway says, “Stay home!”
I’ve
always felt that good things happen when a community comes together to make the
best of hard times. The present circumstances hurt in more ways than one, but we
have to make the best of it, regardless of what it means for us personally.
“If
I had acted like that,” I commented to Mike, “my mother would have had plenty
to say.”
“You
mean, ‘suck it up,’” laughed Mike.
“Yes,
but it would have taken her ten minutes to say it.”
As
a society, we’ve come a long way from hardship. I was born after WWII, but my parents
shared with me their memories of hard times – how during WWI women were
encourage to knit for the servicemen during church, how the community worked
together to provide food to the quarantined during the flu epidemic of 1918, what
it meant not to have the price of a postage stamp during the Great Depression,
and how food, shoes, tires, and gasoline were rationed during WWII. As people pass, these things slip from collective memory.
I
remember so well sitting at the supper table one night, when somehow the
subject of WWI came up. Mother said that as the young men left for war, the
community would meet at the park for a farewell picnic. I was struck by the
finality of that.
“You
didn’t know if you’d ever see that person again,” I said.
“You
figured not,” Mother said in a flat tone.
She
went on to say that they didn’t get much news about the war, but everyone knew that
when “Tom” came home, he would tell them all about it. Tom was the kind that never
quit talking, she said. Tom came home all right, but he was so traumatized (what
they called “shell shocked”) that he couldn’t talk. He never talked again. She
was perhaps ten years old at that time, but I could see she was as affected by
that change in Tom as if he hadn’t come home at all.
This reminds me of a book I read. It's a "children's book" and won the Newberry Award, but really, it's more for grownups. The book? A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck, and I can't recommend it enough. All of his books are great for that matter. But this one has a chapter that will remind you of the story you tell of "Tom."
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