My War

On reading Helen Degen Cohen’s Habry

My war was cartoon Nazis and Japs, rationed sugar, bubblegum a treat. It was Superman belting Hitler through a hole in the universe, John Wayne belting everyone else. It was Bob Hope and Bing Crosby cracking wise, Glen Miller and Benny Goodman. It was walking with my big sister to Cherokee Dairy for a hot fudge sundae. And it was walking with my cousins down Bardstown Avenue to a Saturday matinée at the Uptown Theatre—Hopalong Cassidy, Tarzan with his gorgeous Jane, his trained ape and elephants, and there were Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck battling Nazis. There was always a newsreel; I remember an odd little man screaming to a huge crowd, and planes screaming death, and marching men in high boots with rifles on their shoulders.

We lived on a street of tall black-walnut trees, brick duplexes and apartments, and sirens and blackouts. I remember Dad with his black helmet and black flashlight guarding Rutherford Avenue. I remember him laughing, “I can’t get old man Passamaneck to turn his lights off,” and Mom saying, “Leave him alone, maybe the Japs’ll get him and we’ll be rid of him.” How little we knew.

And so my childhood passed. How could I have known about distant cousins in Lithuania and Poland disappearing through a hole in the universe? That wasn’t my world.

Sometimes I almost regret my easy childhood. And I marvel that I was here, not there. I don’t think I would’ve been a hero. I don’t think I would’ve been lucky, whatever that might have meant at that time and place.

Now I live at my ease on a street of tall maples, oaks and sugarberries, old homes and quiet. There’s no violence, nothing threatening in my neighborhood—no sirens, no blackouts. We raised three children here in peace. I don’t know what I did to deserve my life.

I know only that I’m here in this tiny speck of the universe in my tiny portion of time, that I can only honor my childhood and my lucky, innocent parents.

I bless my days. I can do nothing else.