BABIES

                                                                    

As I have gotten older I’ve turned into a far more sentimental person then I used to be. I used to just get misty eyed over patriotic displays and the death of friends and family. Two different kinds of tears I guess. But something happened to me in the last six months that hasn’t happened before in my lifetime. Three little great grand babies came into my family. “So what’s sad about that you ask? You should be giddy about it.” I am happy and proud beyond my wildest expectations about these babies but yet sad underneath when I look at the world these little ones will have to grow up in. Oh, not their immediate world, they come from good families where they will be loved and cared for. I’m talking about the world they will inherit beyond the nest.

There is a special sentiment for babies of all species and maybe it has to do with their vulnerability and helplessness as they enter into the world. Even the beasts of the forests will fight to the death to protect their young. I’m sure the parents and families of these little ones I’m talking about will go to great lengths to keep these babies safe too. At some point however the tide flows back out and they flow with it and they become part of a greater society and the parental safeguards that protected them go away. For you see, in this world of today, we as humans are turning a blind eye to the future of our young, when it pertains to the world we will leave them to live in. It’s not only the fact that we have poisoned the waters they have to drink and the air they have to breathe-- all seemingly in the name of progress. We also gave them a world laced with drugs and alcohol, cigarettes, greed and promiscuity. As much as decent people abhor this, those in charge, with some convoluted theory about peoples “rights” allow it and by their inability to control it—aid and abet it.

It is a frustrating job indeed to raise your young with high ideals and respect for the earth and those around them. To instill in them a love for God and country and a desire to be decent and a yearning to be a productive part of an ever greater society. Only to have them run head on into those who want to use them as pawns to farther their goals. These in effect brand everything you taught them about growing up the right way – to instead be wrong and inconsequential.

Parents today have an ever-increasing fear of what lies in wait for their kids as they go out into the world. Just the other day I read that deaths from opioids and illicit drugs are now the number one killer of our young people, surpassing automobile accidents for the first time. I look at these babies I talk about and know that as some point in their future they will be tempted by outside movements to join the drug crusade or the sex trade. That leaders of our country will call those fears of their parents fake news and the poisoning of our air and waters a hoax. Oh wait! That’s not just in the future it’s already happening. I grew up in a world largely void of the things I see today. But I fully realize that this scourge happened on my watch and the watch of every other older adult in this county. To my grandkids and great grandkids I can only say God be with you little ones and here’s hoping you can do what my generation couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Make this world a better place to live for your babies.