Saturday, November 28, 2020

GETTYSBURG

We are taking care of our nine-year-old grandson while his Mom is taking a long weekend to visit her friend in Amsterdam. It's quite a challenge. Like many (most?) boys (?) his age, he is digital device addicted, and the hardest part is preventing him from spending every hour of the day with his nose inches from a screen. If it's not video games--Minesweeper is the current favorite--it's the inexhaustible supply of other YouTube videos, or other things too arcane for me to understand.

So this morning I racked my brains to think of something else at seven in the morning, and stumbled into an old memory of James Thurber stories. I thought they might amuse him. I read him "The Bear Who Could Let It Alone"--one of my favorites--along with "The Little Girl and the Wolf" and a couple of others. He was, let's say, mildly amused. 

It was "Birds and the Foxes", which ends up with a moral about "government for the birds, etc." that led us to the Gettysburg address. I thought it would be good for him to hear it, especially given our current political circumstance, so I called it up on the computer (what else!) and started to read those memorable words from the Gettysburg battlefield. 

I was unable to finish. I found myself in tears before we got to the last line, and I nudged him to finish the reading for me. I wondered why I had been so overcome, and I think it's perhaps because of the sheer, grand, powerful nobility of the words that Lincoln spoke, and because we live in such a different time, when such words from our practically illiterate president would be unthinkable. A time, too, when the great experience of American democracy is so threatened by a would-be tyrant and a political party that has proven unwilling to resist his autocratic wiles. 

So I wept as little Luka read that last line. Then he wanted to watch a funny cats video, and I surrendered.

2 comments:

Dr Mad Fish said...

I can feel what you are feeling Peter, though I am not an American. Democracy is dying all over the world - in Australia too. I despair and thank God that I have lived most of my life in a truly wonderful time on planet Earth.

Marie Smith said...

Our oldest granddaughter is nine. It is a great age for discussions about all sorts of topics. Your conversation with your grandson is one he’ll remember forever I bet.