My grandmother, Mary Thomas, was born in 1906 and when I think of everything she witnessed and experienced it just boggles my mind. Her family had kerosene lanterns and wax dip candles for light, chamber pots under the beds and an outhouse. Hauled water by the bucket to heat on the wood stove for baths. Almost everything they ate they grew on the farm, pretty much. They read books for entertainment, because radios didn't become available until 1920, and even then, a poor farmer could not afford one, or the batteries. Great grandpa had two mules and a wagon, and now and then they would take the twelve mile trek to the nearest town to buy staples. The trip took about two hours each direction, so it was a rare thing.
In those days, young women on their periods used rags, or hand sewn pads that they would pin into their underpants and then wash after use. There were no tampons. No Kotex. I remember Gramma being rather horrified to discover that I was using tampons when I was 15. She thought it would take away my virginity. My virginity had not been an issue for about a year by then, but I did not tell HER that.
When Gramma died in 1998, people were spending entire days chatting with strangers on the internet over on the other side of the globe. People were starting to carry a telephone in their pockets. My uncle, with whom she lived, commuted 50 miles each way to his job in his Toyota pickup truck every day, a trip that would have been unthinkable with a mule cart.
And then all the history that happened. Two world wars. The great depression. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Numerous presidents. The Civil Rights struggle. Women getting the vote and slowly gaining something that is just NOW starting to resemble equality in the workplace and the world. Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf War, and all of the little undeclared wars we've had our sticky fingers in. FLIGHT! Man on the Moon. Explosion of Space Shuttle Discovery. Television. The cold war and the arms race. And the disarmament of the nuclear stockpiles. I know she breathed a sigh of relief over that one. I wonder if she ever just looked at all the changes going on and wished things would just SLOW DOWN a little. I wonder if she ever paused to ponder just how much was happening and how amazing it was to be alive to see it all. She was pretty amazing, so I am rather certain she marveled at what she saw happening, and cheered for any sane progress we made.
