11/22/63

I write this to you on the 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination.  I was not there that day.  I was not even a twinkle in my parents' eyes: one was 11, and one was 15.  I can't imagine what that day must have been like: the isolation, fear, and sense of safety completely stripped away from an entire country with the sound of a couple of gunshots ringing through the Dallas air.  

I haven't been back to this ole blog in quite some time...so many things have come up, as they often do in life.  Continuing on the journey to motherhood for a third time, going back to school full time, completing a library assistantship, soaking up the absolute joy of hearing my first two laugh and play together, while still trying to be a good wife and housekeeper have kept me busy.  OH SO BUSY!  It's been a struggle to keep up with life throughout this semester of school, but today has made me stop and breathe and try to figure out our history of as a nation since that day 50 years ago when JFK was killed.

I don't have any answers.  I haven't figured anything out.

I do know this, though.  Even though this event took place 16 years before I was born, I was affected by it.  I grew up knowing what it was almost instinctively.  When I grew up, it was still a part of the national consciousness, so much so that it's one of those events that I have always "just known about."  I grew up secretly seeking out information about JFK, the Kennedys, and what happened that day.  I grew up looking at pictures of John, Jr: him jogging in NYC, trying to ditch photographers, and then trying to grapple with the fact that he was taken from this earth even earlier than his father.  The Kennedys definitely held a mythic sway over me when I was young, and they do even to this day.

Things definitely changed that day.  Innocence was lost.  Feelings of pessimism, doubt, and sarcasm took over our national being.  Sad to say, we'll never be the same.  I wish I lived in Pleasantville, but I don't.  Maybe that's why I cry when I see vintage reels of Walter Cronkite announce Kennedy's death: I want to live in a time of humbleness and simplicity so much that it chokes me up.  Sure, I wouldn't have this blog to type away on every now and again, but maybe we'd all be a little bit happier as a nation.