Grandpa's Sneeze

Last night my brother sneezed and it sounded exactly like my Grandpa.  Grandpa died 17 years ago.  It's not like his sneezes were especially unique or a topic of conversation, but clearly they're etched on my memory.

And my brother makes that same sound when he sneezes. 

It's weird and very flashbacky.

So sneezes are genetic?

What else is genetic? 

Any woman who has given birth will recognize her newborn's movements as he lays in the bassenet.  And that stretch you do in the morning?  You do it the same way you have since you were a fetus.  Mothers watching their children sleep recognize it.  I have three children and none of them wake up the same way as the other, but all of them are exactly the same since they were newborns, hell since they were fetuses.  I remember that movement.  The oldest arches her back, the middle one rolls, the youngest scatters his limbs in all directions.  They did that in my uterus and practically every morning when I woke them for school.

I inheirited my mother's voice - that's creepy to hear fall out of my mouth.

My sons sound like a mix between their father and my brothers - that's weird too. 

But then there are the learned habits.  Like mode of speech or animation.  WATCHING my sons tell a story - Allllllll their dad, right down to facial expressions.

My husband says my daughter has a lot of my mannerisms and in the same breath will tell me how many of my mother's mannerisms we have.  Butthead.

All of that makes sense.  But sneezes?  We don't develop our own style of rattling snot around in our sinuses?  We get that from our bloodlines too? 

Weird.

50 years ago

Fifty years is a long ass time.  Yet as I near the half century mark, fifty years isn't quite so... immense?  I certainly find men over fifty attractive, something that turned my stomach back in my twenties.  The thought of me turning fifty also isn't terrifying.  In fact, several people have said they enjoyed being in their fifties.  I look forward to it!  Certainly better than the alternative, right?

But the historical events that happened "FIFTY YEARS AGO" just don't seem quite so freaking long ago.  Fifty years ago was 1961.  Kennedy was a new president, Martin Luther King Jr was rattling the status quo, Vietnam was rumbling into our vocabulary, and Americans stood in mortal fear of communism.  These are all images recorded on film, played over and over through my school years so that I remember them as if they had happened in my lifetime.  I know, I know, I'm a young puppy for not being alive during the Kennedy Administration or to be able to participate in the conversations of where I was when the President was shot.  Sorry, I was a cluster of cells hanging out in an ovary, unfertilized, unconscious of the world's events.  Take it up with my mother, not like she had any power over the issue either.

In the mid-70's I was force fed these images.  Adults around me discussed them with just yesterday like tones.  "Fifty years ago" back then was the 1920's and that was ancient history!  We studied President Wilson, discussed the after affects of World War I, and the boom years proceeding the Great Depression.  The films lacked sound, the pictures were all black and white, the style of dress foreign and odd. 

Is this how kids today view the ancient 1960's?