John Glenn and the Static on TV.

Its the underwear that I remember. It seems irrelevant, a little patch of cotton: white showing under my skirt, but that's how I see myself. Sitting on the couch watching John Glenn orbit the earth. My mother with her arm extended. Relaxed, happy, proud of the astronaut and country's ingenuity and ability to not only send a man so far, but to bring him back. My little legs not reaching the ground. The soles of my shoes worn from running and climbing trees.

We had a black and white television, with a long plastic coated wire that ran to the roof and the antenna that could rotate. An ordinary photo of an extraordinary day. That's the photo I remember. John Glenn. A better time to recall. It's jumbled now all the events stashed neatly away. The violence and scary things tucked in trunks. The riots in Watts, Alger Hiss , Whittaker Chambers, the witch hunts McCarthy precided over, mixed with the Bay of Pigs and air raids at school. I'm still hiding under my desk , my head pressed against the cold metal. Sitting there. For an eternity waiting for the drill to be over. With school shootings now I'm sure kids are doing the same..

If we weren't under our desks we sat in the halls our backs against the cement walls and butts on cold linoleum. I'm still sitting on that floor, waiting for the siren and the flash of light or nuclear blast. Tense times with bomb shelters being buried in backyards and cans of food stacked in closets. My mother, always afraid the food would run out, squirreled food away under beds and in pantries. She wasn't afraid of much else. Never escaping the advancing troops and tanks of Eastern Europe, even though she was an ocean away, born here. She inherited Bubka' s watchful eye. The old woman listening for the Russians, the prussians, the Germans, like her ancestors running from the Turks into the mountains and burying valuables in the yard.

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We were all like the canary in the coal mine, every member of my family, sensitive to shifts of politics and wind or the rustle of trees. Better to be safe than sorry. Go to the meet and greets, learn about the issues that affect your community. Democracy floating, as fragile as a bubble in the backyard.

Be proud, be a patriot. "Loose lips sink ships". "Ask what you can do for your country, not what your country can do for you". " I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." "Stand up, rise up.", Black fist in the air, now " Take a knee" and a million followers, all like COVID going viral. Be strong. Don't cry. Be like John Paul Jones with a broken mast and weary crew. Outnumbered and out flanked "I have not yet begun to fight." David against Goliath. Cross the Delaware River with George Washington at night and cold. Hero's all.

Father in the Arctic cold, monitoring radar and keeping warm in fur lined parkas. Eating for entertainment and watching movies, confined to short days and darkness, playing cards at night. Boredom and isolation the greatest threats. Watching for polar bears out a triple-paned window and listening to noisy generators.

Even with John Glenn's remarkable trip in outer space and technicians watching the sky for missiles to launch no one was safe, or would be again. President Reagan talking about a Starwars type shield as if it were possible. We the people, really the only ones who can keep each other safe. Wash your hands. Sit up straight. Put the fork to the left and place the napkin in your lap. Don't interrupt or talk with food in your mouth. Don't lean back in the chair. Pay your bills on time to avoid paying interest.

COVID now scares people more than the prospect of annihilation. Oblivion too hard or too big to imagine, Total destruction. Stand six feet apart forever. Do not shake a hand or touch your eyes. Wear a mask. Dont look sick or cough or blow your nose.We are not afraid of COVID.

We are realists, not pessimists. Reality scary enough. War farworse than viruses. After 9/11 police departments nationwide were given funds to buy eqhipment. Rumor has it that one police department bought a tank. A tank! Hard to believe that a tank would be a good use of funds when the military can launch missiles from laptops. Bullets fly through glass. Don't step on the slivers. Stay away from windows and lock the doors. Put the dog on a leash. So many rules to learn.

Our innocence dissapearing along with Jimmy Hoffa, bombings, weathermen, the Black panthers, Angela Davis. Patty Hearst holding a weapon, the heiress robbing a bank! Fish net stockings and nehru jackets, Yoko and John Lennon in a bed. Woodstock and bras being burned. Betty Friedman and Gloria Steinman women's rights and equal pay. Women's liberation. My mother never ignored a threat. Strong, surviving, always biting off more than she could chew. "Give in, give up, walk away" advice from the peanut gallery.

The endless Vietnam. Second grade I think, with the white cotton underwear. People now afraid of COVID. JFK killed in my third grade year. I am in the schoolyard watching horror spread across the yard while we're waiting for the bus. Then brother Bobby too, felled by bullets both scared the country more than COVID. Martin Luther King, gone. Black lives mattered then and now. All lives matter.

COVID has taken lives. Bullets and riots and looters took our innocence. The students killed at Kent State, falling on the green. One of the first school shootings, now many more. "Pay attention. Cover your heads, prepare for the blast Use cardboard to cover the windows. Improvise. . Quick now, get under your desk till you hear the all clear signal. Line up, stay to the left, hold the hand of your buddy, fire drill, evacuate the building.. Stay together.. Get out, get out. Leave your coat and books."

For awhile I studied airplane crash rates ( forget first class, The tail section is safer. I read survival stories too, lost hikers and sinking boats, how to tie a tournequet, purify water, make a stretcher out of tree limbs and swim against a riptide or build a shelter in the woods with pine boughs for a bed, but here I am learned in first aid and outdoor skills, knowing to remain calm in quicksand and spray DEET to guard against ticks, here I am...still waiting, not knowing where to go to find safety, after all these years:. Huddled under my cold noisy metal desk. Trying to remember a teacher's instructions. Waiting for the "all clear". Underwear no longer cotton or white. The world never safe.