“And the World Still Spins”
“Could be . . .Who knows? . . .
There’s something due any day—I will know right away,
Soon as it shows.”
Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony, you young, naïve teenager, singing your heart out in “West Side Story.”
I don’t want to go back in time crying my eyes out like I did as a juvenile watching the credits roll at what was a surprise ending (to me) in the movie in 1961.
Over the years, as I experienced noteworthy life events in real time, tears usually flowed freely.
I remember watching for days while the three primary television channels covered the Kennedy assassination ending with the solemn funeral presession down Pennsylvania Avenue that included a riderless horse called a Caparison. [The Cap Horse displays boots backwards signifying this warrior will never ride again.] I remember being in tearful awe of the dignity projected by a veiled Jacqueline Kennedy.
I was a college music student at Duquesne University attending an afternoon concert when the primarily African American district called “The Hill” billowed towers of smoke dangerously close by after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. There was no way out of the city, they closed all the bridges. [I learned later my father talked a policeman into letting him through so he could take me home to safety.]
During most of my teen and college years I was a typical self-absorbed kid. I spent most of my spare time practicing my flute, baby-sitting to earn money for college, and helping at home since my mother was physically debilitated from severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Noteworthy things still happened around me; I had classmates enlist to fight in Viet Nam and I watched students protest on my campus and on television around the country.
I watched the news and heard Richard Nixon resign from the Nation’s highest office and later watched as he boarded the helicopter in disgrace, leaving Washington D.C.
I watched more than a decade later when the space shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after take-off.
I watched years later when planes flew into the Twin Towers.
Did tears flow? Of course. One advantage of living a long time is retaining the ability to care and at the same time keeping life’s changes in perspective.
Since the results of the recent presidential election were announced, it’s been a struggle keeping my emotions in perspective. If that wasn’t enough, the fires in Los Angeles, a place I called home for more than twenty-five years, have added to my nebulous feelings for the future.
On Monday, January 20th I will watch the inauguration. I remember watching previous speeches. Kennedy’s famous calling to Americans to “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Those words left an indelible, positive impression on this then thirteen-year-old.
Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 featured the poet Maya Angelou and Aretha Franklin’s rendition of “My Country ‘tis of Thee” at Obama’s first inauguration in 2009 are moments I still treasure. In 2020, the Biden inauguration proved inspirational when a twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman read her poem, “The Hill We Climb.”
I watched the 45th President’s inauguration and remember feeling demoralized, rather than uplifted, sad rather than hopeful. I remember not shedding a tear. It was as if there was no point.
Yet as I watched the service for President Jimmy Carter held at the National Cathedral, I was reminded that there is the actual possibility of goodness in every walk of life.
And, yes, mustered by the remembrance of tragedies over a lifetime and still moving on, I’ll watch the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States.
Knowing the importance of truth, no matter how often lies are yelled, I will rally as much positivity as humanly imaginable; knowing that the pendulum continues to swing, and the perspective of age is an asset.
Thomas Jefferson sang in “Hamilton,” “But the sun comes up and the world still spins!”
So, I’ll continue to watch important events because the world still spins.