My mother would have been eighty-eight today, had she lived. Instead, I’m celebrating her birthday in memorial; as this is the tenth anniversary of her death.
I honestly can’t imagine my Mother being alive today. The world’s many upheavals since her passing would have been too much for her to bear. Her beloved TWA is gone. Her beloved President Clinton had clay feet in the personal arena. Her beloved New York City had 9/11.
Mother would have had to adjust to a world that is remarkably different in these past ten years. She would have had to learn about the Internet, iPods, Blackberries, Bluetooth. She would have had to contend with two wars, and Mother was a pacifist. So our forays into Afghanistan and Iraq would have troubled her deeply. She would have been confused by online banking, Google, IMing, and the myriad ways we communicate with each other today.
It’s not that she wasn’t smart — she had a Ph.D. from a noted university — or that she wouldn’t have tried — she was tenacious too. But as I age I see how difficult grasping new technology and new ideas can be, and I believe my Mother would have seen the same. She was, in many ways, a realist.
Which is why I’m glad to be celebrating her eighty-eighth birthday with her in absentia.
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