Not A Parade

They have been with us for so long. In the beginning we were their caregivers, and then gently as the night began to fall, their hands reached out to steady us and help maintain our balance.

They were the Beths, Janets, Ellens and Nancys, who helped make Christmas cookies in our kitchens.

They were the Davids and Richards and Kens, who took our pretty daughters to their proms.

They were the children of our friends, and they are our children.

They were called Baby Boomers, but we knew them only as our kids.

For a brief moment in time, we shared youth together. They were too young to realize it, and we were too tired to comprehend that it would soon end and was only a brief magic season of life.

In later years, they joined us on our travels. We called them the young ones, although we weren’t quite that old yet ourselves. Still, it was they who lifted the suitcases, counted heads as we boarded buses in foreign lands and knew the exchange rates far more accurately than any of their Mothers. They shopped with us and visited spas although they hardly needed them then. We drank sangria in a Spanish courtyard, laughing and crying together, as we reminisced with a dear friend. And one memorable year we were stranded in Scotland as fourteen of us awaited the end of an avalanche. Oh, we shared some great adventures and certainly laughter, in abundance. They are our daughters, and in our eyes, forever young. But that’s no longer true because now neither are we.

They watched and grew older from the sidelines during the years that seemed to whiz by as lives changed drastically. The heroes we loved, the heads of our households, no longer took the 7 a.m. LIRR into Manhattan. More of their time began to be spent on golf courses rather than on the floors of stock exchanges. Our own "so called" careers or to be more accurate, employments, ended and families moved on to enjoy the American dream. There were less worries. Businesses were sold. Villas were purchased. Travel agents were called. Medical coverage was always comfortably retained as the era of joint replacements and cardiologists was entered. Life, as always, had anxieties, but not about paying a doctor’s bill.

During those years as the world of our children moved from carefree to intense, mortgages were secured, children were born, and the role of their parents shifted from center toward the fringe of their lives. We still opted to view our offspring as youngsters, choosing to focus on their achievements rather than peer honestly at what might lurk in their future.

As families crossed an invisible moment in life, the parents’ role became no longer that of benefactor. Rather we soon became the beneficiaries of a younger generation’s concern. Today for the first time in decades, our now adult children desperately require the strength of parents’ support. Our voices are needed to return to them what older Americans once accepted as norm, and a segment of America is watching slip ever so quickly away.

Our country’s turntable is moving, but backwards, not forward. Now Baby Boomers require help. Within the last decade they and their families have become victims of a failing health care system. Medical coverages their parents knew and accepted, no longer exist. A huge section of this nation’s population is frightened about their future, and rightfully so.

I speak not only for the children I once knew, but for every adult Beth, Janet, Richard, Nancy, Patrick and Kate, who once sat in other Mothers’ kitchens across the U.S. They are too young for Medicare; yet attempting to cope with the complicated reality of the increasing failure of America’s health care system. Premiums escalate daily; stories of coverage being lost when employment abruptly ends, are ongoing. If we, their parents, friends and families, are listening, why isn’t Congress? If their pain is felt or their cries heard in Washington, why is nothing changing? There is no apparent movement in the near future to amend or replace a law that negatively affects so many citizens. If America fails its own population, how can government claim any other success in this vast universe?

I wonder how many members of the U.S.Congress have family members anguished about the possibility of no longer having adequate medical coverage. How many of the now adult Nancys, Patricks, Davids, Kates and Kens, who once sat in their kitchens, have lost the job security that helped supplement rising medical premiums? How many of their children’s friends are in financial peril due to the escalating cost of prescriptions, and preventive medicine procedures? Perhaps we should ask, and in our combined voices remind the 514 members of Congress they not only accepted our votes, but also, our mandate for change.

A long time ago, we took care of our children. Then as the twilight of our days slowly descended, they began to take care of us. Now is the time when once again, we are able to reach out, not with our hands but voices, and lend them our support. It will only take a phone call, not a parade.