THE BABY BOOM GENERATION

The statistics show that there were 76,000,000 babies born in the Post WWII period from 1946 to 1964. I was born in 1949, right at the beginning of what was to be the most amazing generation of anytime. If not by its sheer numbers, but by what it was to witness, change and uproot.
This generation saw the end of horse and buggies, ice men and rag men. A man on the Moon. The end of crank phones with operators to Princess phones to cell phones. From computers in huge buildings with thousands of people to a computer at home with someone sitting alone in the dark at a glowing screen.
We are a part of the old and a part of the new. We are shaped by traditional beliefs and yet rebellion to those same traditions which we embrace now as though they are and were the most perfect thing.
When we were growing up we saw only what was wrong with our parents. Believed they were somehow the monsters who held us back. Years later, parents ourselves, we want our children to think of us as friends. Later we realized that friends don't often make good parents and we became the "monsters" we once dreaded. And while standing in their shoes wondered how they managed it all because for all their monstrous ways, we turned out pretty decent human beings. Think about it, we changed the world because we believed we could. They had a lot to do with it. As they told us their stories of the cruel war, as they showed us the numbers stamped into their skin, as they taught us to fight for what we believed in, they were as much a part of the change as we were. One day I looked up at my mother and found her to be the wisest woman I ever knew. Then all the things wrong with her weren't so bad anymore. In the end we were bachelorettes, eating Chinese food at Christmas and celebrating the New Year with Spanish rice, chocolate milk and Casablanca. I realized my dream of truly knowing my mother came in the latter part of our lives when I didn't have to pick at what was wrong and she didn't have to be right. I learned to end every brief argument with "You're absolutely right. After all, you're my mother." That always stopped the fight and we'd laugh. And I am so glad I was born at a time when you can make your life-reboot your life-be born again.
What an amazing time to live. Being 60 will have its challenges, I know. But every Boomer knows that old Dylan poem: "Don't go gentle into that goodnight."