The urge I have that needs turning to words is almost to big for prose,
It is to big, it is an ache slightly below my sternum
A picture of my small self and my first encounter with an orphan that needed me,
we were both smiled on by the early 50’s, we were the off-spring of WWII
We cared for each other, the orphan and I, we made sense to each other, but then
I heard my mother crying that day with dad, he said, “we will know by morning if they turn around at the ships or not”. He was talking and she was crying “Cuban crisis”
He trusted Kennedy but Khrushchev we did not know.
You see my dad helped oversee a detail of Japanese soldiers doing clean up in post-nuclear Hiroshima, before he set up farming with my mother
Very early after the bomb drop when the trees were still shadows on the ground, early after the blast when my dad’s patrol watched over the Japanese clean up crews with out weapons, only shock
My dad knew nuclear, my dad dreaded all night long the Cuban crisis-he did it by radio and pure fear-he had to go to work the next day either way
One way, he would be going back to war, the other delivering fuel to farmers
He died of a brain tumor you know
My dad of WWII.
But! We were safe in the early sixties, getting ready for the potential blast to our nearby town housing a B-52 base- 32 miles away from me and my calf.
We had school desk, thank God! My safe place!
That’s right, unlike the Japanese school children who were vaporized in their nuclear episode, we were taught to get under our desk and shut our eyes
(I wager they were having similar school drills with the Russian children)
We were told the best chance of keeping plaster off our heads was under our school desk! That’s right-and we drilled it week after week till I forgot rumors of radiation, vaporization, and worst of all dad’s stories….
We would have been 30 miles from ground zero of the impact of a Russian nuclear war head-plaster?
I’m 65 now, I’ve seen many an orphaned calf, and I’ve seen some weak-gened animal specimens survive the selective process , but my specie astounds me!
I’m not so much upset with my country, as I am myself-I forgot some of dad’s stories
Please find another story for the children in South Korea?
I heard a military man the other day addressing Korean children say, “and children, you never want to look toward the blast, put your head down”.
Give the kids, if they are young, some hope-give em the desk strategy.
Put your head under-shut your eyes. Give em a damned desk if we adults can’t find sanity.
For the older kids that can’t get underground, maybe some type of breathing exercises
Some brand of truth for the older ones of age
This is not one of my happiest aches-it’s worse
But for 65 years nuclear annihilation has plagued the world I inhabit
For God’s sake can we, the “smart-caretaking specie” come up with a better way?
I don’t want to tell my grandkids how to get under a desk!
And don’t look at the “mushroom”.
I get it, we are humans and humans have done this shit to each other from the beginning, but—-
Maybe if enough of us who promised to change the earth from our day
Would stand and turn toward those that would employ “mushrooms”
Our grandchildren could play in the sand in peace ..
Footnotes:
1. Desk-in the 1960’s made of heavy duty 3/4 plywood with steel frame. In 2017, a desk is usually particle board with plastic frame and cover.
Have we gotten smarter in our preparation for nuclear wars? I think not-let’s revisit our schools and get them better desks?
This seems to be my specie’s line of reason
We need some type of evolutionary quantum leap…until then, us older ones need to turn towards who and what we are, and sit with it, and sit with it, and sit with it, and right before we blame another–sit with it some more…\
Starting with myself comes to mind—
Pax
My people on one side, paternal side, were drawn to books and writing letters and such. It seemed to be good therapy for abandonment and shame in that day. Their myths, their inner gods that kept them together, could only be found high in the trees. The low hanging myths were not potent enough for the burdens they brought with them from Missouri, a potent variety of abandonment and shame.
Spiritual Formation 