We are Here for such a short time. So much happened before we were born. And more will happen after we die.
Rebecca and I this COVID -19 summer have been in Houston babysitting four-year old Irene, one of Rebecca’s six grandchildren. ‘What will Irene be like when she is 30?’ we asked ourselves the other day. ‘We likely won’t be here’ one of us said, meaning not Houston-here but Here-here. That conversation prompted this thought:
What will I miss when I die?
I will miss knowing how real stories turn out. For example,
- The stories of family, friends and Irene
- The story of Luther College, my professional home for 35 years.
- The story of America
Wouldn’t it be a kick to catch a cosmic-glimpse of Irene as a parent in 2050, the Luther College course offerings of 2070, and the two paragraphs on Donald Trump, America’s 45th President, in an American history book written in 2120.
What’s truly humbling about getting older is seeing today what seems obvious but was not obvious, just a few history-moments ago. I will truly miss the actual-worked-out-in-real-time stories of family and friends, Luther College, and America because there is too much I do not see today that will be obvious at some distant or not so distant time. We know too little about how our world will change to know how any of these stories will turn out, unless we are here.
I will use one example from my life to illustrate this phenomenon, how what is obvious today was not obvious yesterday?
Gender Equality in Sports
I attended Assumption High School in Davenport, Iowa graduating in 1967. Looking through Assumption’s 1967 yearbook*, I was mildly surprised to see no ‘girl’s’ sports teams, only a Girls’ Recreation Association that organized intramurals. I say mildly surprised because I thought I remembered a girl’s track team. It turns out there was no track, tennis, golf, volleyball or even basketball, for girls. Ironic for basketball, as Iowa and a few other states in the 1920s and 1930s pioneered girl’s six on six person basketball but it was mostly played in small towns and not in large city high schools.
Gender inequality in high school sports would begin to change in 1972 with the passage of Title IX, a law that “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education programs or activities that receive federal funds…” Looking at Assumption’s current athletic’s web page, it shows 11 boys and 10 girls sports teams plus competitive cheer leading and dance programs.
Assumption’s boys and girls sports’ teams have won 51 state championships since 1970. The past decade, boys teams have won 9 and girl’s teams 16, including the 2016 state championship girl’s soccer team.
What is amazing to me is that no one I knew in 1967 ever asked why the girls did not have athletic teams.
Others asked, I am sure. Feminism was in its second phase but not yet mainstream and had certainly not filtered down to my little world in Davenport, Iowa. Soon after my graduation from high school, like many others, I would begin to question America’s war in Vietnam and its racial inequalities. ‘Seeing’ gender inequities in sports and other areas of American life, while obvious today, was not ‘seen’ by me and too many others in 1967.
What is it that I do not see today that others will see as obvious at some future point in time, when I am no longer here?
Rebecca, Irene and I walk Bray’s Bayou almost everyday, with Irene asking ‘why’ to almost everything we observe, from the tracks on the path to the masks on people’s faces.
I think about an imaginary conversation along Bray’s Bayou in 2086 between a 70 year old Irene and Rebecca and Paul’s spirits. Irene is telling us about the late 21st century and our spirits ask over and over again, not why, but ‘wait, what**?’ As in, ‘you’ve got to be kidding.’
Why did we not see that?
*Thanks to Mary Ann Ricketts who pointed me to the yearbook link on the Davenport Assumption web site.
**The first and most essential question in a great little book Wait, what? by James E. Ryan.
