Life's a Stitch

That’s the question asked particularly on the anniversaries of historically significant events. The following are at least fifty years in the past!

I’m dating myself to include the day Kennedy was assassinated. I had been sent into the hall for talking in class, no surprise, when a big 5th grader told me the president was shot. I was in a quandary as to whether I should inform the teacher, but figured I was in enough trouble as it was.

I remember Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s funerals because on both those days I was babysitting for the same family and one of the kids asked why every time I babysat there was a funeral on TV.

The moon landing where I was in Rome while on a high school art tour, an adventure with 43 teen girls, a young woman in her 20’s, one boy and two nuns. We got up in the middle of the night to witness the moon walk with many Americans and Europeans. I remember being naively shocked when the US national anthem was sung, followed by boos from the crowd, a political commentary of the times.

And of course there was Woodstock. The day they closed the NY thruway, was the day I arrived back to NY from that school tour. One of the nuns and the boy, her nephew, were supposed to be headed upstate to their home town. I guess they made alternative plans. I clearly remember the music and events surrounding the festival.

I think if someone had told me what my life would be like 50 years hence, I might not have believed it. The loves, the losses, the fact that I would be living happily in Canada. That in my 60’s I would walk 500 miles across Spain and 250 in Portugal. Sounds far fetched. That I would geocache (something that wasn’t in existence then) on six continents. That I’d have a rewarding career in social services prior to finally becoming the artist I wanted to be on that high school art trip.

A painting in progress: