a different era

I can picture it, easily. Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Dad. A Sunday afternoon. A then-new portable black & white TV in the living room that must have been cramped. The original transmission of men walking on the moon, with Walter Cronkite setting the stage. I can picture it, though I wasn't a witness: my mother had some crazy idea about 10 week-old babies and naps.

I've often told her she should have propped me up in front of the television, just so I could say that I saw. Not that there would be in purpose in that; that history still wouldn't be my memory. As most of the events narrated or explained by Cronkite, it was just a little before my time. My image is from late in his career, sitting at the anchor desk with a symbol of the Iranian hostage crisis over his shoulder: an eagle in a cage.

Years hence, Iran's in the news, again or still, but now virtually all the headlines and commentary that come into my home arrive via individual screens; news on our televisions is rare, save elections and the occasional catastrophe. Besides Obama, I'm not sure what my daughter will remember from the history of her childhood. I made sure she had no first-person memories of 9/11: she was only four. She hasn't complained about that yet, but, being her mother's daughter, I expect some day she will.