When I was a kid I worried about...

 When I was a kid, I worried about..

Pleasing my parents.  Did I have the right outfit (hello Benetton!)? Grades.

In reality, I worried about nothing.

When they were kids, my parents worried about nuclear war.  They told me about drills in school where they would hide under desks.  Seriously, schools trained kids to hide under desks in case a nuclear bomb was headed our way.

As a child of the 80s, I knew about the dismantling of the Berlin wall. It meant a lot to my parents.

As a teen of the 90s, I knew about Desert Shield and Desert Storm - in fact, my Nana bought me sweatshirts on the Home Shopping Network to support each of these military events.  She was vigilant at the time because my cousin had enlisted, but also because she was a war widow.  Her husband had left for WWII when she was pregnant with her first child. Though he came home wounded, he succumbed to his wound in the 1960s, leaving her with a college-aged student and a 14 year old daughter (my mom) to raise on her own.

I lived war by wearing a sweatshirt.  My Nana lived it worrying about the father of her unborn child. My mom lived it (Vietnam), worrying her boyfriend (my dad) would be drafted.

My Nana also grew up during the Great Depression.  In addition to this inspiring her to make my mother eat all her vegetables - because food was a commodity you couldn't take for granted - it meant that she spoiled me.  Tonight I saw an homage to the parents of the 80s who stood in line on Black Friday to score Cabbage Patch dolls.  That was my Nana.  She stood in line for me, because she wanted her daughter and granddaughter to have more.

In the last nine months, I've reminded myself often that my generation has never experienced the turmoil of a draft.  I won't say that we haven't fought a war, as it would diminish the lives and service of those who have served for the 90s and all of the 2000s/2010s.  But I did not worry that my boyfriend or brother would be drafted.  I did not worry that my community would be attacked by nuclear missiles.

This is not to say that my generation did not worry.  I was a young teacher during Columbine.  I was a young professional during 9/11 - when my friends and family members worked in NYC. I had many high school friends enlist and serve in the wars we have been fighting for the last three decades.

But generationally, we haven't had it so bad.

This is why I have a hard time with the fact that people cannot give up some of the things we regularly do.

This is why I have a hard time with the fact that people refuse to wear a mask.

This is why I view our current epoch as the war that Gen X never fought.

In the last two weeks, my family has received two letters stating that someone may have been exposed to Covid-19.  In both cases, our reaction was "shut it down." We know that the chances of any of us contracting the disease (because we are careful) are slim. We also know that if any of us did contract it, we would likely be ok.  We are healthy - we exercise, we eat well, we take supplements, we don't have any underlying conditions, etc, etc. 

But we also know that we have family members who we want to protect. For the last nine (almost ten) months, we have been careful.  

It is almost Christmas. My daughter recently said, "All I want is to be able to hug my grandparents."

My kids are not experiencing war.  But they are experiencing the loss of family.  And I wonder why they have to experience this loss.  I think it is because we - our generation - doesn't appreciate that we have never had to sacrifice.  We don't know what war is.  As kids, we didn't gave global worries.

I wish my kids didn't either.