risk effort, love, and hope to be enough

The Greatest Generation

I miss the Greatest Generation,

our parents who survived and thrived

within the challenges 

of Depression and World War and Baby Boom,

I miss the power of their personalities,

what they could create with family,

with a kitchen, with their work,

I wonder, though, if all kids can feel

a golden age that preceded us,

a sense that our world is uncharted,

and that we are just faking it,

my wife’s mother cautioned us about World War II,

that they didn’t know then how it was going to turn out,

that they just had to do their best,

and risk that effort and love and hope were enough,

I wonder how much we all feel as impostor,

and that, at our best, we fake it until we make it.

by Henry H. Walker

December 24, ‘18