Will the World and I Even Make It to my 50th Birthday?

The news that came out today about North Korea's nuclear weapons capability, while not that surprising, is certainly scary, and brings back the cold war fears of my childhood. Back when I was a Catholic grammar school student in Brooklyn, we lived with the constant spectre of The Bomb. We were reminded that the "Reds" would not think twice about vaporizing us, a warning that hit home during the Cuban Missle crisis. The routine of duck and cover was a part of the regular school routine, with the added anxiety for us girls who were reminded that a nuclear holocaust was no reason to duck and cover in an unladylike position. Uniform skirts had to be strategically placed to avoid any impropriety in our last few minutes on earth. Going to our final reward with our dresses hiked up too high was a certain ticket directly to hell.

We were told that we would never see the "mushroom cloud" that we saw in photosand flims of nuclear bomb blasts - those of us lucky enough to live in New York would most likely be vaporized instantly. When I moved to New Jersey, the consensus was that we might have a few moments to view the growing cloud before the nuclear winds flattened us.

So imagine the terror of my family, when, while driving at night on the New Jersey Turnpike, we were suddenly bathed in the glow of a huge, red, mushrooming cloud. It towered over us in the sky, and those of us in the back seat of the station wagon were riveted to it as my father floored the car. I fully expected that at any minute the nuclear wind would catch up to us, and I was not at all happy when my father pulled over to call the local radio station to tell them The Bomb had been dropped on New York. They hung up on him.

Later, when we had made it to our house without being burnt or blasted, we found out that actually, an oil refinery in northern New Jersey had experienced a huge explosion and fire. It wasn't The Bomb after all.

My kids haven't grown up believing that we could be attacked at any minute - that is, until 9-11. As a New Jersey family this struck particularly hard, we know families who lost loved ones, we've talked face to face with survivors. The haunting spectre for them has become the possibility of suicide attackers dropping from the skies and lurking in the mall. And with today's revelation comes a new shadow over them, the old shadow of The Bomb.

Daily Life