Waking Up From History

 

Waking Up From History

(Lyrics are from “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones)

I was alive and I waited, waited

I was alive and I waited for this

Right here, right now

If you ask anyone, any generation, for a memory, a historical event that shaped them, molded their experiences or defined their youth, you will get almost immediate answers and often they will be very similar.  My mom for instance will mention the moon landing first.  But she also talks about the Kennedy assassination, the Beatles, and Vietnam.  I asked my son, who still has a lot of life left to live, what he felt was important, prior to the Covid pandemic, and he mentioned the election of Obama.  How these events affected the world, their world, may vary, but they did.

 A woman on the radio talks about revolution

When it’s already passed her by

Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about

You know it feels good to be alive

The first major historical event I remember is the Challenger explosion.  I watched it with my Colorado History class.  I remember it not only because it was tragic, dramatic, and shocking, but most of all because of how upset my teacher was.  I always thought of this man as strong and invincible.  I owe a lot of my love of history and geography and geology to him.  But the most important historical event to me wouldn’t be the Challenger explosion.  

Whether we realize it or not, for most of my generation, our world was defined and framed by the Cold War.  It began before most of our parents were even born and shaped the world we came into.  It defined the focus of school lessons and even our entertainment.  (Don’t believe me? Remember War Games? Iron Eagle? 99 Red Balloons? And that’s just a few.)  For no one was this truer than those of us fortunate enough to be Brats.  And by that I mean Military Brats, or in my case, an Army Brat. 

Brats are the children of active duty military personnel.  My dad was a Cavalry Scout and during his rotations in Germany, was assigned to border patrol on the East/West German border.  I was 12 ½ the last time we moved to Germany at a time when tensions between East and West were beginning to heighten again.  My friends and I were at an age where we felt it, were aware of it, and to some extent understood it and the potential consequences.  We got used to school buses being stopped for bomb threats and sometimes buying Italian ice while waiting.  (Actually the fact that you got used to it is pretty scary in and of itself.)  It was all part of life: bowling, dancing, traveling, dating, shopping, and just being teenagers.  Difference is, we, at least my friends and I, actually thought about the “what if” of a possible breakdown and invasion.  If a war came, what would WE do?

In August of 1989, I moved back stateside.  I won’t say I was happy about the move, because I wasn’t.  But that really isn’t important to this story, German class is.  I don’t remember my German teacher’s name.  I remember she hated my German accent.  She said it sounded just like I had learned to speak English in New Jersey.  (What can I say; I had learned German to speak it to the people who lived there, not for academic reasons.   It worked just fine for teens and vendors.)  I don’t know if it was the accent or if she thought I should know formalities, but she constantly corrected me, which was probably fair.  And I also remember she had family in East Germany.

I saw the decade in, when it seemed the world could change

At the blink of an eye

And if anything

Then there’s your sign of the times

November 9, 1989. The world woke up and the wall came down.  I was sitting in German when I found out.  It was my German teacher who told us.  The Berlin Wall had come down.  Life, the world, history itself changed that day.  It was only the beginning of the changes that would come.  The next two years would see the political map shift constantly, sometimes multiple times a day.  As the Iron Curtain collapsed behind the Berlin Wall, it was like the entire world stopped holding its breath. 

I was alive and I waited, waited

I was alive and I waited for this

Right here, right now

There is no other place I want to be

Right here, right now

Watching the world wake up from history

I wish I could say that story ends with a happily ever after, but as it is often said, history would be boring if everyone got along.  The Communist Old Guard still holds some power within Russia and causes problems.  The breakdown of Yugoslavia triggered atrocities and genocide that led to war.  Conflicts in the Middle East can still be traced back to Cold War policies.  Nothing that happens in this world happens without consequences.  The Cold War shaped events and policies.  It shaped generations.  You never escape the past.  You learn from it and move forward, hopefully.

But for one glorious moment that November day, we truly watched together and woke up from history. And anything was possible at that moment.