Frontline

Did you watch Frontline on PBS? OK, if you didn't, you must. It's a two hour time commitment, grab your knitting and cancel something else. It's important, do it with your kids. Here's the link.

Large and Medium were riveted. At least for the first hour, then it got past nine and they are fighting off a cold, and zzzzz. Small was too busy celebrating his recent, if tardy, potty training victory over "liquid waste" (as I recently saw a sign in a public restroom name it). They focused their attention, asked questions and listened to John McCain's story without the automatic, knee-jerk reaction we all have become accustomed to. Wait, that was me. I mean, so did I.

The program was a balanced portrayal of the two men who could potentially be responsible for leading our nation out of crisis. If all politics is personal, it's make or break time for our family. The next four years will transform our children into college-bound teenagers at precisely the time our income will be limited by our age and desire to shift gears. We opened our insurance open enrollment materials today and discovered Mark cannot retire at 55 as planned in less than 300 days. Instead, we must wait three more long years to get the 80% covered retiree health. (I do suspect those three years, if in his current position, will take more years off his life than paying a higher premium for "the remainder" will cost, but I digress.) Against my better judgement, I opened my 401(k) statement from a previous employer today and saw a 30% drop. And that was before October.

I don't know many families for whom this is not make or break time. Or individuals for that matter. My retired and ailing parents, my single friends, my friends with children and mortgages suddenly beyond their reach, my friends who want to buy houses, my husband's siblings and cousins. Perhaps even my own well-off siblings, but I don't know their situations well enough and suspect their political slant is different than mine.

Watch Frontline with your kids. They get so much of their political opinions from listening to us old folks, they don't have the background. They need their own background. Naive, innocent, loved and loving, our three children could not, for instance, understand why Obama's advisers would say Americans weren't ready for a black president. Our formal history study is still in the ancients, but the community they live in and the more recent history they understand did not prepare them for this statement. But, Mommy, he's the better man.

All I remember from the elections of my youth are loud, raucous arguments between my sister, who had recently learned to swear, and my father at the dinner table. More often than not, one of them would storm off in tears. It wasn't often my father, he didn't do tears until my mother had open heart surgery 6 years ago. I hope my children remember more than this, hope they remember a quest for truth and an earnest regard for the future.