My colleague and I were talking about great outings for toddlers, when I asked if he’d ever taken his young son to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. He paused slightly before explaining that he didn’t quite enjoy pointing out all of the “artifacts” on display: “Daddy used to use this … and this was the phone Daddy used to have … oh, and here is the television I used to watch …” and so on. That got me chortling.
An artifact from the Museum of Science and Technology's collection. Look familiar?
I have to say, I’ve had the same disorienting experience myself. Just this summer, we were looking in “antique” stores while we were vacationing in Maine only to find a rotary dial phone. “Oh, I thought. This is an antique?” But sure enough, my daughter was fascinated by it … she’d never seen one before!
And it got me thinking … if I feel so stunned by the passage of time in my own life at age 39, I wonder how my grandmother must feel today on her 87th birthday? The things she’s lived through make my experience with such trinkets as telephones pale in comparison. Just consider that:
- Her first memories as a child must have included the hardships of the The Great Depression, which preceded World War II. (What must she think of today’s young children and their $200 Nintendo DS games so casually tossed in school bags?)
Unemployed men vying for a job during The Great Depression.
- As a 15-year-old girl when World War II began, she’s lived through bombs dropping through her neighbourhood. The heart-stopping fear of running to cower in shelters. (I wonder if she thinks my generation should be more grateful for their freedom and safety?)
- She met a handsome young Canadian soldier as the war came to a close and made the long, courageous trek by boat to a country that was completely foreign to her. It was not the hop-on-a-plane journey that international travel is now. It was a choice to start a whole new life. (Those, like me, who complain of so little leg-room on flights must seem like silly nincompoops.)
- That it was considered inconceivable for her, as a woman, to work outside of the home or drive a car. The role of housewife was demanded of many women in her time, whether she liked it or not. (Does she ever wonder how her life would have been different had she been born a generation later?)
While I don’t actually know what she thinks of all these enormous changes — but I will be certain to ask her now — I can tell you this: she seems to have been able to gracefully adapt. And really, how extraordinary it is for someone to be so adaptable … to live through so much change and still keep the ability to adapt. This is a woman who emails, plays computer games and skypes with me when I’m overseas.
When I grow up, I want to be just like my Gram.
photo credits: Canada Science and Technology Museum and Modern American Poetry’s A Photo Essay of the Great Depression
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