my elders

A veteran teacher told me when he remembered drinking-fountains and bathrooms being segregated by the color of people's skin. 

My Idaho grandfather rode a horse to school - a small log cabin of one room. He used an out-house for a bathroom as a kid. 

My Chilean grandmother left her rural home at 16 and went to live in the big capital city. She became a nurse and nursed the president of her country. Later she asked him for a big favor, which he granted.  

Sometimes the experiences of our elders enrich our lives with a breadth of stories that we would never have lived otherwise. Travel enriches a life. But one can "travel" in one's own neighborhood talking to people rich in years. 

I took a summer course from a Hungarian woman who had her ten fingers broken at a concentration camp, and her children taken from her until they were adults. In Los Angeles I taught with a boxer and military man who survived the race riots and lived through multiple drive-by shootings. My great-aunt, after whom my sister is named, lived most of her life without electricity in her arid town. I met her blind in a poncho, a childhood legend. A New Yorker I worked with marched in the civil rights era. 

Somehow the events and diverse generations of our planet don't seem so distant. Their experience in a way becomes mine. Better said - ours. My conversations and memory wealth are increased. The collective unconscious - the massive whirl of humanity and life - stirs complete again.