1933

People don't really think very much about the year they arrived. "What year were you born?" And I say "1933." There are no flashes of recall — from me. Sometimes, an older questioner hearing "1933" (having absorbed the year they were so anxious to know) will tell me of a personal epoch or even a little history of that year.

Nosy buggers!

As for me, my arrival and indeed afterward a while aren't very clear to me. In fact, I don't have any recollection of cradle days. It's just as well. Babies spend a lot of time slobbering and pooping between cuddles and sometimes during them. What's to write about?

The world didn't wait for me to arrive. Nor for you. It was very busy in 1933. But then I'm sure it was busy the year you arrived, too. I search my memory and still, as always, my earliest recollection is standing on a beach with my parents viewing the burnt hulk of the Morro Castle, derelict off the north Jersey coast. A lot of people died on that cursed ship. The accent on horror was a magnet for morbid curiousness; I guess that's why we were there. My own picture of that ship is fuzzy and any memory of conversations by grown-ups doesn't exist. The incident is but a brief flash, the beginning of time in the known world. Before that there was slobbering and pooping. The Morro Castle beached in 1934.

So much for the early years. Autobiographers can't do better than that. If they say they write from personal reflection, they're lying.

In 1933 the world was committed to change. Roosevelt introduced a New Deal to Americans. Hitler offered Germans a New Order. Stalin was forging a Soviet Internationale. Mussolini was near his zenith in Italy. Gandhi was the messiah of the sub-continent. Japan was preparing a Far Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere. The affection of systems was never more influenced by contradictory dynamics that then were pulling the world in six social directions and vying for ascendancy. In that year they, except for India, were clothed in invincibility. But all of those influences of so short time ago, including India, have evaporated. Those who were born later see them as long gone in personal and dispassionate dramas that have been tucked into the dim and distant past.

We, it is certain, will go the same way.

"Early or late
They stoop to fate
And must give up their murmuring breath."

We had our introduction to history when we were born. It doesn't follow that we are guaranteed to respond to its lessons if indeed there are lessons. Gandhi might have been applauded in his time (not yet in 1933). He, in turn (probably in 1933) admired Mussolini. Mussolini changed course and his vision was distorted before he died. Gandhi's was unshakable in all his lifetime but his best disciples replaced his with their own ideas as soon as his ashes were scattered.

Life begins.
Crises are its closest companions.
Friends are its rarest...