Time

I look back sometimes and think about how old my grandparents on my dad's side are, to have been born in the late 40s/early 50s somewhere, living right after WWII in that time when everyone lived in fear of the next nuclear bomb. It seems even more impressive when I think of my Morfor, my grandfather on my mother's side, born at the end of the 20s, living through the Great Depression but in Norway. Did it affect Norway? He abandoned his rich family there and came over to the USA with his wife before my dad's parents were even in high school.

Then I think of my Great Grandma Parish, and how she was born in 1912, and how strange that must have been to grow up in the Gilded Age, the sexual revolution, the Great Depression, multiple world wars. How strange it must be to have lived through that transition from women wearing dresses to women in pants, cars hitting the market, airplanes, computers, the space race, and so much more. She lived through all that and has never had a tooth pulled.

My Morfor's grandparents would have lived through the American Civil War. They wouldn't have taken part in it, seeing as they were in Norway, but it happened while they were alive. What was happening in Norway then? It's a little disappointing to think that I don't know. They saw the turn of the century from the 1800s to the 1900s, which seems like a far more drastic turn to me than 1999 to 2000 was.

It brings me to what I've seen come and go. I think CDs existed when I was young, but I always listened to cassette tapes. Those haven't been sold in new for a long time now. I've seen Walkmans and CDmans come in and out of style, and several generations of iPod. I've seen the switch from corded phones to cordless to unlimited cellular, and it seems so... strange. They feel insignificant against some of the things my grandparents, and even some of the things my parents have seen, although theirs also feel quite insignificant.

It's like, the more distant the past, the more important it feels. It's so long lost to us now. We can look back, and some groups try to imitate it, but it's not possible to truly live it any longer. I wonder if I would have enjoyed that lifestyle when I lived then, or if I would have always dreamed of seeing electricty not only in houses for our newfangled lightbulbs, but in our pockets, readily available. I wonder if I would have dreamed of carriages and plows that didn't need horses pulling them.

My mom looks back at when she lived on her big farm, 7 miles from her nearest friend's house, and how much fun it was to hop on her pony and ride over there. They would ride to Walmart together, tie their horses to something that worked as a hitching post, and go in and buy an ice cream. They would leave their horses outside without a worry. Every time the fair came to town, they slept in stalls at the fair grounds rather than riding their horses to and from it every day.

That was the 1970s, in New York. Not that long ago, in a state generally viewed as very urban. I could never do any of that nowadays. I have the horse, sure, but not the safety, and everything is nearby. Even with it nearby, people are worried about letting their children walk several blocks to a friend's house. That's another thing I lived through: the stage of 'kid's should walk everywhere' to 'there are kidnappers everywhere, it's not safe for kids to be left alone'. I still walk a lot, but my youngest siblings don't, never have.

Funny how time never really feels like it's passing, life never really feels like it's changing, until I look back and consider how things were at various thens. Just a few years ago, video tapes were still sold. Now we're experiencing a transition from the DVDs that made them obsolete to BlueRay.

It feels insignificant, but I bet my grandchildren will think I lived through a heck of a lot of ancient things.