In my lifetime....

You know you are getting old when you say things like "I never thought I would see this in my lifetime...." and that's what I have been saying and thinking all week with this election. All the thoughts that have gone through my head, about the civil rights movement, the turmoil of the 1960s, the fight for equality over the years when I was coming of age - they have all served to make me think about my life and the things I've seen. And that makes me feel old.

I remember listening to my grandmother talk about the day that Lindbergh flew across the ocean in his plane. And my parents talking about Pearl Harbor Day. They were concepts to me - they were another time and not part of my experience. Now here I am, sharing my life experiences with my kids who are probably similarly detached from it all. How can they know what it was like to see the war footage on the 7:00 news every night? They certainly are not seeing that now! How could they understand the fear that a young girl felt when she saw the atrocities that blacks were enduring during the height of the Ku Klux Klan years? They cannot even envision a world where women were not police officers and politicians!

I'm glad that they did not have to experience those things. And yet I am realizing that the fact that I did makes me "of a certain age". Yikes!