My youngest has a birthday this week. She was born the Wednesday before Mother’s Day back in – well we’ll just say the 70’s. I don’t want to get too specific for fear she may cut of my supply of grandkid time. She was my Mother’s Day gift that year. She was a gift that’s kept on giving for quite a few years now.
Her twins – now about to turn legal driving age – were also born very near Mother’s Day. So the celebration of Mother’s Day fades to the background in our family what with all these birthdays and now various graduations among the youngest generation. Her birthday has me thinking about all the changes in my life and the global village since she was born. Oh my. So many changes.
When she was born most babies I knew about were started and delivered the traditional route. By that I mean they were conceived without any help from outsiders and arrived to greet their biological mother and father – who were for the most part married to one another at the time.
As I’ve been reflecting on the many changes since I brought her home to meet her big sister, I note we’ve both made tremendous progress and taken some frightening steps backwards. It seems that’s the way we move forward year by year. We resolve one problem and have to address another.
Karen was born not long after we landed on moon but long before everyone carried their phones around with them. In her life-time we’ve nearly wiped out polio; but we’ve seen a huge upswing in the number of people who are ripped off via breaches of various electronic transactions.
We’ve made huge strides forward in our stated goals of liberty and justice for all; but we’re also witnessing alarming trends in an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have not’s.
Contentious political contests are nothing new; but the constant 24/7 coverage of who said what awful thing about who is new. And definitely annoying.
We have the technology now to feed every child on the planet. We are also witnessing the travesty of desperate refugees fleeing from such horrors as military and drug-related violence and human trafficking.
So, my darling daughter, please thank my generation for the note-worthy contributions we’ve made to the common good during the course of your life. Please forgive us where we’ve failed in some tragic ways. As you hit your stride in your own career, I hope you’ll resolve to make your own contributions to the common good. As the time to launch your children into adulthood draws close, I hope you’ll do what is within your power to make their world better than it is now.
That is the best possible Mother’s Day gift: our mutual commitment to keep striving to make the world our children and their children inherit from us better than we found it.