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Defining Moments in Time
Imagine a moment, a moment suspended in time, a moment that alters every aspect of your life, a moment that causes you to question your very existence. A moment that, for the rest of your life when recalled, you will remember exactly what you were doing...the smells, the sights...the sounds. This is a defining moment in time. These are my defining moments in time. What are yours? I'd love to see your list. Drop me a link and I'll check it out.
1. Friday November 22, 1963: I was 8 years old. That was the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the day my father's father died....indirectly because of the death of President Kennedy. My grandfather owned a small fish and chips stand down by the harbour in a town called Bagotville in the Canadian province of Quebec. It came over his radio that the President had been assassinated. President Kennedy had been a much loved President, not only in America, but all over the world. My grandfather closed up his shop right away and went home to share the news with my grandmother...he collapsed as soon as he walking through the kitchen door, having suffered a sudden death heart attack. Was it the excitement and distress of this news? Was it something that was waiting to happen? We will never know... I remember my father sitting on the couch with his face in his hands after the priest had come to our house to break the news to him. That was the first time I had ever seen my father cry.
2. Sunday February 9, 1964: Still 8, that was the night that the Beatles appeared for the first time on the Ed Sullivan show. Millions of people all over North America tuned in to the Ed Sullivan show every Sunday Night. It was a much loved variety show by one and all. If you were invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan show you had MADE it! I remember being allowed, for the first time, and after alot of begging, to stay up to watch the show that night, in all it's entirety! Those grainy black and white images of the Fab Four and the sound of screaming girls...so loud you couldn't actually hear anything the Beatles were singing, willl forever stand out in my mind. I thought they were fantastic, even to my 8 year old mind. I remember a girl at school afterwards telling us all that the Beatles came to visit her at her house every weekend and if we would be her friends she would tell them to come and visit us the next weekend. I hung around the house the whole next weekend, like a bad smell...awaiting their arrival....afraid that if I left my house even for only a moment I would miss their visit to me. Of course, they didn't arrive....that was my first experience with grande deception and deceit.
3. I can't remember the exact day or time, but I know it was on a cold winter's evening sometime during the winter I was 9. My father had a nervous breakdown. My sister was a very highly strung child. I think now she had adhd but back then nobody knew what the heck that was. We only knew that she couldn't sit still for a minute....ever...The teacher at school had told my mother that my sister needed more attention at home, and my mother took that to mean that my dad needed to spend more time with her. So my mother had forced my father to sit with her that night and do her homework with her. Of course my sister was unable to sit still long enough to do any homework, instead twisting and turning around in her chair constantly...driving my father nuts so that eventually he said to my mother..."I can't do this". which in turn started my mother nagging at him. My sister was sitting behind his chair...whispering something obnoxious like "poopy daddy" or something like that....I was standing there all ready to go to my Brownie Meeting and I remember my dad picking up the coffee table and throwing it with all the ornaments on it across the room just like it was a piece of paper then he got up and ran down the hall towards their bedroom...punching 3 or 4 holes in the walls as he went. He barricaded himself in the bedroom and we could hear him in there sobbing and banging his fists against the floor...nobody could get in. My mother sent me across the backyard in the winter's dark to get the husband of a neighbour to come and help her. I remember running through the darkened night, falling and tripping in the snow...the feeling of urgency...the fear that I was going to lose my father...the fear that I had in some way caused this....and afterwards my mother calmly told me to go to Brownies. I didn't wantto go...but I went and I remember walking home afterwards and wondering what would be awaiting my arrival home.
4. Christmas 1965. I was 10 and my parents told me that what the kids had told me at school was true...there was no such thing as Santa Claus....he was only a story. I was devastated. I remember going to church that evening with my father and listening to the Pastor tell all us children that Santa Claus had been spotted on the radar and was on his way and thinking...liar...I lay in bed that night feeling betrayed....and yet...that was the one Christmas night I remember hearing his bells....was it hope? or was it one of the last vestigages of my childhood slipping away...
5. December 3rd, 1968. Elvis, the 1968 special. We all watched with rapt attention as the King of rock and roll gyrated his way across the stage in a skin tight black leather suit as if that were the only fit raiment for a king. We watched him singing and reaching back to his mystical roots losing losing "not just self-consciousness, but consciousness itself," ~ biographer Peter Guralnick I had only just really discovered Elvis myself. Oh, I had known he existed before, but the summer before that my parents had taken us to see the film "Blue Hawaai" and that was when I recognized this man as a pop icon and developed somewhat of a crush on him. Watching him gyrate and perform on television on this occasion was pure magic.
6. July 20th 1969 Man touches down and walks on the moon. If you were alive on that date you most certainly were glued to your television set or radio to watch this pivotal moment in scientific history. Who could have ever imagined this day to ever come. We watched, in a combination of rapt excitment and secret horror as Neil Armstrong ascended the ladder from the landed Appolo space craft and touched his foot on the moon for the very first time...those words "One small step for man, one Giant Step for mankind" resonating in our ears and thoughts. What would be next? Space stations on the moon where people lived and worked and played? It was an amazing moment in time to be a witness to.
7. September 5, 1972 Terrorists at the Munich Olympics. The Olympics had always provided glorious escapist television fare. I loved to watch the gymnasts and track and field atheletes. This time, however, cameras were instead focused on the Palestinian gunmen that stormed the Olympic Village's Israeli compound, killing two men and holding 9 other's hostage. We watched the unfolding drama in horror, when finally the announcement came...."Our worst fears have been realized," said an ashen-faced sportscastor Jim McKay, after police botched a rescue attempt. "They're all gone." A little bit of my innocence and naeivite died that day. I was 17.
8. May 29th 1975. I was 19 and holding in my arms for the very first time my son...my first born. I remember looking down at him and being totally amazed that this had come from me...a mixture of awe and fear grabbing my soul...and total, selfless, amazing love for this helpless squalling bundle of joy. Live would never ever be the same....from then on I was that magical creature I had always wanted to be...that I had waited my whole life to be....MOM...and I would get it right! I'd be the best mom ever! or at least I wanted to be the best mom ever...only my five children could let you know if I have achieved that or not!
9. Midnight November 9th, 1989 the Berlin Wall comes down. For 28 years it had stood as the symbol of the division of Europe and the world, of Communist suppression, of the xenophobia of a regime that had to lock its people in lest they be tempted by another, freer life -- the Berlin Wall, that hideous, 28-mile-long scar through the heart of a once proud European capital, not to mention the soul of a people. And then -- poof! -- it was gone. Not physically, at least yet, but gone as an effective barrier between East and West, opened in one unthinkable, stunning stroke to people it had kept apart for more than a generation. It was one of those rare times when the tectonic plates of history shift beneath men's feet, and nothing after is quite the same.
10. January 26th, 1986, all of North America watches as space shuttle Challenger prepared for launch. Little did I know that I was about to witness a sober lesson in safety and technology. I remember feeling slightly pissed off as I had been looking forward to watching Oprah and it had pre-empted by thisspace launch. It had been a very long time since the launching of a space craft into space had held my attention and they had become somewhat matter of fact to me and quite boring actually. I remember the moment it exploded inthe air and the feeling of disbelief at what I had just seen. Was that supposed to happen?
11. August 31st, 1997. I was in my son's bedroom with them playing video games on the television when my ex husband called out from the other room. Princess Diana has been in an accident. Game forgotten, I ran into the other room and sat there watching until I was too tired to watch anymore....they were calling it "The accident of Princess Diana." when I fell asleep that night. I awoke at about 6 the next morning, turning on the television only to be greeted with the headline..."The death of Princess Diana." How could this be. I remembered getting up at the ungodly hour of 4 o'clock in the morning to watch this beautiful princess get married to her prince. I had carried my babies and given birth simultaneously with her. My life had paralleled hers in so many ways....except I hadn't married a prince and I wasn't a princess... and my husband at that point hadn't betrayed me yet....I realized that tragedy touches even the untouchable...
12. September 11, 2001. I had just gotten home from work, when the telephone rang. It was my husband...."Turn on the telly" he said, "you won't believe what's happening. Someone just flew an airplane into one of the World Trade Centre buildings in New York City." I turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit. The rest of the day was spent glued to the television. I couldn't believe what had happened...and when the buildings began to fall, I watched in horror, all innocence was lost forever...We were living in a different world now...a world that would never again be the same....
Written by mariealicejoan Blog about this entry |
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I can remember everyone of those happenings ,most of them were mind blowing unbelievable,.,.,.,Jan xx
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I remember most of those too. . .you write so lovely.
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It's sad to see how many of yours are tragedies. Most of mine are as well. What's odd is that we only share one of them, the moon landing. The other "big" events you note took place at times that I didn't find out about them until well after they had happened, such as not finding out about 9/11 until it was actually 9/15 because I was in a remote region of Canada fishing with friends.
Fred
http://journals.aol.com/ravenjuiced/those-eyes-that-the-che rubim-dre/
17/10/06 12:26
Susie
http://journals.aol.co.uk/sus