Current travails minor compared to parents’

Climate destruction, pandemic, economic decline, racial dysfunction apparently have degraded mental health in America. But when the blues become my only song, I ponder my parents’ timeline that covered most of the 20th century. They were both born shortly before WWI which ravaged Europe and beyond, claiming 20 million souls. Just when that was ending a flu pandemic took another 50 million plus, including 575,000 here in the Homeland. The 20’s gave them a respite with jazz, prosperity and flapper liberation. But the ’29 Crash devastated the Good Life when no social safety net outside of family existed. Married in ’36 they somehow survived till WWII, again claiming 50 million, started the US economic boom that carried them and all 3 kids to economic security. But just when we won the Good War, the specter of Nuclear Winter cast a pall over that prosperity for 2 decades, including near certain Armageddon over tiny Cuba in ‘62. Yet, growing up in the Fabulous Fifties, I never had a sense of the lifelong angst they soldiered thru. They both appeared untroubled, somehow having weathered life crisis after life crisis with an aplomb many cannot summon today based on increased reports of mental health issues. And like the Porter song, when those blues come along…I concentrate on them.