68 and a day, or as Joe tells me I have begun my 69th year (It is a good thing I really love him, because I KNOW I am just 68…yeah JUST 68 is hard to write, but its not JUST 69). Thank you to all of the friends and almost like family from Facebook who acknowledged my birthday, it does make a difference, and in this case difference is important. I remember when a year actually took forever. A school year, endless…a year until next summer vacation and eternity…the years to graduate from elementary school, an infinite amount of time…but then something happens to the time space element of the universe, and years become mere moments, and mere moments a flash in the brain causing one to say, did that happen. My almost 100 year old Aunt Meercy, wakes up every day and the first thing she tells the staff at her independent living apartment is “I thank God I am alive.” So here is to Aunt Meercy, and another year of my life!
Somewhere on my pendulum of birth to now, I have also realized that it is not just the living that matters, but how life is treated. At first it was more about my life and my close friends and family, but somewhere along the way, when I really began to understand that there is GOOD and BAD, I became adamant that life is about the quality, even for those I don’t know, or may ever meet. In the old days of the 50’s no matter what the crime the bad guy did the time. However way back then the assortment of bad guys ranged from the Colored Person, the Homosexual, the Jew, and occasionally the Lady who forced men on her. In the 60’s and 70’s there was some redemption for minorities, but if you were to be GOOD you were white, preferably middle class, had short hair, heterosexual (pretending to be happily married) and some sort of Christian. Then all hell broke loose and somehow we imagined a Trickle Down Economic Theory and it became almost MAN for himself. Through my 68 years and a day, I witnessed laws being passed by Congress to offer equal rights for most, but never really saw those laws embraced by all Americans. I sat at the edges of a Third World War during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and watched men I admired murdered because they believed in freedom for all. But all did not like that idea.
I am a part of history, and hopefully I have many more years of history in front of me. So somewhere in scheme of things I have decided that I will not be silent or accept the silence of others when in fact BAD tries to triumph over GOOD. I will raise my voice, not wait last minute as the Jews did in the Warsaw Ghetto, not sit silently as someone walks in front of my place in line, and never again close a closet door, because in opening it I might offend someone else. Here is to my new year, and to the people in my life, from long ago to today, and here is to always being LOUD and PROUD!
