Histoire

Liam asks this morning, "When you were young was everything in color?" "You mean, like, on TV?" "No," he says, spreading his arms out, "everywhere."

They ask me what life was like "back in the '80s." I tell them about not having seen a computer before I was in college in '83, and about owning albums instead of CDs, and about how nobody had movies or movie players at home.

"What did you eat back then?" Mostly the same stuff, though I remember a Hawaiian Punch/Kool-Aid period, before Granny decided to cut out sugar, thanks to a worker strike in some far-flung place. Never went back to the stuff.

I sometimes take them back to the REALLY old days: the '60s. But that turns into history: civil rights, feminism. They take it in, but they can't relate. I talk about the Civil War--brother against brother; we've been to some of the battle sites--stood where men died. History is cold to children, though. I don't know what moment warms it up.

Monday is MLK Day, and it's the occasion around here when privileged white people talk to their privileged white kids about black people and racism. Like I can teach anyone about racism, really. Come on. Maisie "loves" slavery: the narrative of it, she means: it's a great story. American Girl has a former slave: Addy, who escaped on the Underground Railroad with her mother, leaving her infant sister, Esther, behind because the mother knew her cries would alert the soldiers. I read it and choke back sobs, knowing it's fiction but also knowing that impossible times called for unimaginable, undocumented, private choices. Imagine leaving your baby behind.

"When was this?" Maisie asks. "The late 1800s," I tell her, knowing it's ancient history to her. "But in 1963, the year I was born, black men were still being lynched on Maryland's Eastern Shore. That wasn't so long ago." No change in expression. She can't relate.

"Did kids have Playstation back in the old days?" Liam asks. "You mean when I was a kid?" "Yes," he nods.

No, no Playstation back then.