I had a video chat with a good friend the other day, who lives in Kansas City. He has a three-year-old son, and any day now, will have a newborn on his hands. Besides talking about the general insanity of the world, we started comparing notes of how we have been surviving with cuts to our income. I being laid off, and he having his salary cut. We both have been finding ways to make food last as long as possible, and we throw nothing out. We both joked to each other that we sounded like our grandparents talking about living through The Great Depression.
When I was little and did ask my grandparents about the Depression, and mind you all of them were in their early 20’s when it happened, they all sort of laughed it off, but also, they did talk about not having a whole lot of money, and making every dime last. I especially remember all of them telling me that thy learned how to fix everything if it broke.
I might have grandkids one day, and they might ask me about this, but what I really wonder about, and so did my good friend, was what will our little kids take away from this? My five-year-old knows that there was a lifestyle before Covid, and she is already telling me she can’t wait to return to normal when Covid is over. But is she going to remember the anxiety, the uncertainty and the feeling of discord from around the country? How much of this daily, just dumb fuckery will stick in her mind? How will this influence her for the rest of her life? For my grandparents, the Depression made them thrifty, inventive, and they had a sense of common purpose with all Americans to solve big problems.
I hope we can do the same.
