Thoughtfulness and Pandemics

 As a child, I was fortunate to have a mother and father, four grandparents and even two great-grandparents that survived most of my school years.  Additionally, I gained step-parents at ages 12 and 14.  Not everyone was exactly the same, and I certainly preferred some over others, but due to my fortune and their times, every one of them was thoughtful.  Let's think about what being thoughtful means.  There are several connotations.  Being thoughtful means remembering birthdays and holidays.  Check.  They did that.  Being thoughtful means having thoughts.  Check.  They had thoughts and opinions.  They followed the news.  What did they ALL do that it seems a lot of people no longer do?  They deferred for the future.  They put thought into the future.

Part of it could have been the 1918 pandemic.  All of my grandparents would have been school aged and at high risk.  Maybe they had friends who succumbed. My favorite of my grandparents would have been six in 1918, which made her 26 in 1938, so the dust bowl era and depression greatly affected these people, too.  They were miserly.  They saved old calendars for writing.  They ate the less pleasant parts of a chicken.  Nothing went to waste.  When I visited this grandmother's basement, I would see a room with shelves of canned items.  She would have done lots of canning through her life, but I saw mostly store bought cans of vegetables.  She was ready for shortages in the stores. She wasn't always focused on "today".  She was ready for another pandemic or depression.   She planned for eventualities and turned over those cans of vegetables before anything went bad.

But, being miserly was just one side of the coin.  She was miserly because there were things she wanted for the future.  She wanted her children to play piano, do well at school and go to college (as she did).  They all played piano (especially my mother), all excelled at school (particularly my aunts) and all went to college.  The influence was such that I believe all of the grandchildren did these things as well.  The future wasn't theoretical.  The future was tangible.

I could get into other definitions of thoughtfulness.  I'll defer that for now except to say that Grandma Focht was the most important person in my life other than my parents.  

My child is exposed to wonderful elders as well.  Superficially, they are just as nice as my grandparents.  They remember birthdays.  But, not all plan for a tangible future.    There is a generation of people who are growing old who may be remembered for their alternative sources of news, risky behaviors and their propensity to argue with each other.

Those who would risk others during a pandemic did not have a grandmother to set their families right.  It is more sad than anything else.  Many have no example to show them how thoughtfulness could make them heroes. They see no other destiny than slaving for the man.