Happy Birthday

JACK
We need to note the passage of time: It’s a year since we started this blog. October marks both of our birthdays, we now need to adjust our age. It would be very interesting for us to make note of celebrating our birthdays and what it means to each of us. To me, it is a very sobering thought going past 83 and into 84. Something has clicked in the dark recesses of my mind, which tells me that whatever it is that I want to get done there is a sense of urgency to do it now. This is not happening with any prognostication of whether I may get to 90 or 100, but for some reason I find that 84 is an awesome number. One of the factors that makes this passage of time more enjoyable is my ability to project some of my thoughts in this cross-generational conversation. My recollection of 32 was the enormous time that lay ahead, as opposed to now as I realize how much I have already done. Yet, I feel the need to do much more.

HILLARY
Admittedly, 32 feels pretty good. I am about to get married, and we are starting to plan for having children, and this fills my mind and heart with a great deal of joy and anticipation. I am so thankful to have a partner now that will walk the rest of the journey with me, and we are excited by the prospect of raising compassionate citizens, and what that process will entail. Sometimes I feel like I wish that we had found each other five years ago, as planning for two or three children at 32 is a little scary, in a physical sense, but I feel more emotionally prepared than I would have been even one or two years ago. Sometimes I get scared that I won’t have the time with my loved ones that I want, because I know that it is a chaotic world, and random bad things happen to good people all the time, but I try to keep those fears at bay, and enjoy all the time that I hope to have ahead of me.

JACK
I am delighted that you feel the vast vista of life that is open in front of you. I have experienced, enjoyed, and suffered those elements of life to which you look forward. I have built a career, had two happy marriages and have had children and grandchildren. I share with many people of my generation the frustration in not leaving as good a world as we found. I have been watching this great documentary on World War II by Ken Burns on PBS. When he was giving his rationale on making this remarkable film he said, "Every day 1000 World War II Veterans die, and in five years there will be very little personal experience that can be said about this traumatic time in our history." Having survived combat, and observed the Korean "police action", and the Vietnam War and now this horror that is happening in Iraq, I realize some universal truths. It seems like the minute we declare war, even an almost figurative declaration (The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, and now The War on Terror,) we’re on the way to defeat. Today there is more poverty, drugs and more terror, than at the moment we declared war. Just as my heart cried out for my buddies who were killed in WWII, so it does now for those who loose life and limb every day. The frustration is in not having prevented these disasters for my children and grandchildren. In earlier days, I felt that there were answers. Now I fear that too many of us do not even know the questions. Yet what I have been saying all along is, as individuals we carve out our lives and we are indeed fortunate when they are both fulfilling and happy. At 84, I still have the optimism that, somehow, some of this will be resolved. I had the good fortune to have a friend, a great ceramicist, named Beatrice Wood. She was in the middle of the Dada movement with Picasso and Miro. Beatrice made it to 106, and when she was 104 she said to me, "I’m ready to go anytime, but I always want to know what’s in the kiln the next morning."

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