11/05/2024
A personal family history
When I was a little boy in Wales, both my grandfathers were ailing. I grew up watching their illnesses steal their lives little by little, and then they finally went.
Our nanas were quiet ladies and they lasted longer than their husbands. Memories of them are more vivid than papa and grancha, more hot sweet tea, biscuits, faggots and peas (a favorite Welsh meal of beef broth, peas and a big soft spicy meatball the size of a softball).
The stories of their lives were anecdotal because us kids learned their family histories from our parents, aunties and uncles.
The common thread that connected their stories was WWII. This was easily believed, not only because we loved and trusted our parents, uncles and aunties, but there was still plenty of physical evidence of that war - everywhere. Black and white photos of our parents as children; war time service tattoos on our uncles arms; scruffy, dirty old men sitting alone on park benches with blank stares and ni****ne stained fingers, some missing limbs.
Stories about those times always stopped abruptly, and now as an adult I think those stops were autonomically unconscious protective behaviors - personal traumatic memories likely halted their next sentences. Every single story from every single adult family member ended this way.
I grew up, no longer a simple 7 and 8 year old and became a grown up intellectual 9 year old (lol). Discovered big crater like holes in the fields and meadows where we played; asked why was there a half buried “den” at the bottom of an old neighbor’s garden.
Did actual bombs fall on Newport, I asked.
They did, and the big holes in the fields it turned out were bomb craters, the result of the Homeland Defense tactic of stringing lights outside the town to confuse the night attacks from N**i bombers. They fooled their pilots into thinking these empty arable night time fields were the Newport Docks.
The half buried kid’s den it turned out, was an air raid shelter for the family that used to live in the old house down a few doors from ours. This question unlocked the bombing story from my mother that affected a family a few houses down from her childhood home.
Families then had the option to wait out the raids in padded basements, or use the same kind of half buried shelter I discovered by my own house, out on the edge of Newport - butted right up next to dairy cattle and sheep meadows.
On that night, mam told us, the kids dad said to the family “we’re sleeping in the cellar tonight” . I’ve often wondered why.
On that night, their outside shelter took a direct hit, but because they had opted to stay inside - tucked away in their cellar, they lived to see another day.
There are other hardship stories we learned about, like hunger that led to night time netting of roosting starlings in the salt marshes close to my dad’s childhood home. He and his brothers brought them back to nana Maher’s kitchen for plucking and they went into pies for the family: 4 brothers and 2 sisters. 🥲
So why am I reminiscing?
As I observe the current state of politics in my adopted country, I’m tortured by my history. We Brits and ExPat Brits who became US citizens (just like me) we all have similar stories and share this history …
Fascism ripped Europe apart in the 1930s, dragged the US and all UK Commonwealth countries into the fray but eventually the threat from AXIS countries (Hitler’s Germany; Italy’s Mussolini; Franco’s Spain; Japan’s Hirohito) all ended in exhaustion, hunger, disease, fatalities beyond imagination and eventually a delicate but until now, a lasting peace.
Lives were upended, life itself was brutalized- but somehow, countries concurred (even the defeated) that this must never happen again.
On this eve of the most consequential election in the history of the USA, we find ourselves on the precipice of deciding in what kind of country we want to raise our children and grandchildren.
It really can’t be a facsimile of 1930’s Europe or a replica of present day North Korea; Russia; Iran, Syria or Hungary. There’s no reason we have to resemble these horrific dictatorships.
Collectively, we can make the decision to prevent those black and white movie news reels being produced in the US (where white supremacy K*K rallies and Americans hailing Trump with raised arms in a worshipful salute would be exported around the world).
The frightening mindless faces of followers showing their Hitler-like cultish devotion to an emperor god king. A revival of 1933, N**i Germany with added color from the zealous opinions of Mussolini and Franco.
This is not a model for the US; we have always stood fast against authoritarianism and fought for the rights of others. We can prevent violent persecutions of minorities; we can recognize the (God given) opportunities the US can provide migrants who are fleeing persecution or murder and share our land with those in need.
What kind of country do we want to be. We can’t be both.
Please join me in standing against the darkness and violent path that faces us if we acquiesce to the threat of our lifetime.
Donald Trump is the biggest nightmare this country has ever faced since its founding. The man is inhuman, vile, a convicted criminal and a usurper. Please don’t vote for him.
Vote for Kamala Harris. A leader for our time and an example our children can emulate. Someone who is decent and responsible; a president we can trust to take care of us and not milk us.
A leader we don’t have to shield our children from when he gives a blow job to a microphone stand in front of his adoring fans (who cheer and applaud). A madman who despises crippled wounded service men and women and calls them losers. You know, you’ve heard and seen him yourself.
Please, please don’t let him occupy the White House, ever again.
Thank you from my heart.
