There’s an old gospel song that has a line that goes "When I look back over my life…" and today I was in a sentimental mood and was doing that with mine. (Ok, it was a slow day and I was bored.)
Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s I never would have imagined the things I’ve seen and done and the places I’ve been. If you look at my Facebook photo albums and the "Cities I’ve visited" map you’ll see a lot of places mentioned. Here are just a few of the thoughts that came to my mind.
- I remember watching Apollo 13 come in for a splashdown - live. I was seven and my mother was preparing me ahead of time to minimize any trauma if anything went wrong on the re-entry. Now people just remember the movie.
- I still remember the day in 1974 when Richard Nixon left the American white house for the last time, parts of the speech he gave and him waving from the helicopter. Kids only see video or read about it today.
- I still vividly remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard that Elvis died, when the first space shuttle disaster happened and of course more recently, when Princess Diana died and watching every second of 911 unfold live on television. (I still get cold shivers when I see the video.)
- Growing up in the 70’s I never would have imagined going to a country behind the Iron Curtain in the former Soviet Union. With the Cold War at its peak, we never thought there would be a former Soviet Union. In 2007 I went to Kyrgyzstan. This trip turned my life completely upside down (for the better).
- Growing up in the 70’s I never dreamt I would go to a communist country. In 2008 I went to China and saw an amazing country.
- I also never dreamt I would go to a tropical place and yet I was to Belize in 2006. (P. Mike probably will never let me go to the tropics again with my extremely fair skin.)
- In the 1990’s I was speaking with a deacon in my former church, who was in his 70’s, and he told me that he had never been outside of Halifax, not even to Truro. And here I was having been up and down the entire eastern seaboard to Florida and back by car, been across Canada at least four times at that point (one of them by bus – I’ll never do THAT again) as well as many other places that’ll take too long to type.
- I never dreamt I would meet so many famous people and even get a handshake from a world leader (German Chancellor Helmut Kohl when the G7 summit was in Halifax). I have a picture of Charleton Heston in my mind wearing a green hotel robe and wool hunting socks, and even now I can’t picture Moses any other way.
I’m not saying all of this to brag and I’m certainly not pining for the old days. I still have a lot of living to do, which includes going to Krygyzstan again for a longer stay. I’m just looking back over my life, seeing all of this and saying "Who’d a thunk?!" It’s a long way from rural Hammonds Plains to the other side of the world. As the British say…I’m just gob smacked!
About all of this...as P. Bruce would say, "Just a thought."
