Today I turn seventy, a number Hallmark decrees a milestone based on the number of greeting cards there are. I’ve moved through all my significant birthdays pretty smoothly. Thirty was a breeze, and forty was fabulous. Fifty felt empowering and sixty-five, well, I spent that one quietly in lockdown observing the start the of the pandemic.
Age and numbers have never really bothered me. Except one
Ten.
Turning ten was traumatic.
No number has come close to the profound sense of change I felt turning that number. The world seemed to shift under my feet. It was the first time I turned double digits. I knew there was no turning back.
No more single digits. Ever again.
The next time there would be a change in the number of numerals, I would be an unthinkable One Hundred years old. And in 1965, that seemed an impossibility, one reserved for ‘The Guinness Book of World Records” or “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
It felt like childhood would soon be slipping away, and I wasn’t keen on that.
“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” That opening line of the TV soap opera that our cleaning woman, Willy Mae, watched every Tuesday while she polished our silver in the kitchen played through my mind in an endless loop.
I clung onto my childhood as tightly as I held my stuffed animals to my chest, several of whom still shared my bed.
Without understanding why, growing up seemed dangerous.
After ten, there was no going back. The teen years were just a “Tiger Beat” away. While other girls my age may have been anxious to pack up their Barbies, rushing head on prematurely to be a teenager, I dug my PF Flyers firmly in the terra firma of childhood.
I felt woefully unprepared for the adult life that lay ahead.
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Drawing of my office at Edelstein Industries 1965
Ironically, though in my make-believe after-school playtime I was in the very grown-up world as the CEO of Edelstein Industries.
By fourth grade, Pierre the artist had receded, and I had moved into the corporate world. Among several imaginary enterprises I had created, I ran my own advertising agency, where I was the account executive, head copywriter, and art director rolled into one.
Playing in the adult world and then sitting down to dinner with my parents seemed much easier than actually being one.
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Vintage greeting card sent to my parents
But one thing I learned that year was that our country, like my parents would always take care of us. Our government would be there to catch us if we fell. Especially in old age.
1965
As troubling as turning ten was, the year itself, 1965, stands out as one of my favorites.
A Kandy colored world, melding flower power with the New! and Improved! It was the beginning of the Great Society that brought to fruition the principles that defined us as Americans. The good and caring America I pledged allegiance to every morning in school
It simply was a great year.
It was great not only because of the Beach Boys, or Hermans Hermits, or Sandy Koufax pitching a perfect game. It wasn’t just the marvel of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can, or the fact that I took my first airplane ride, performed at the New York World’s fair, or The Beatles, yes, The Beatles played at Shea Stadium, a mere car ride from my house.
We were living in a Great Society.
Or striving to be one.
The year began with President Lyndon Johnson promising to create a Great Society “where freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit.”
LBJ had won the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. We had a president who used this mandate to push domestic improvements he believed would better Americans quality of life.
Our Weekly Reader discussed each new advancement that year, and they came in a torrent.
He passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 erasing Americas long standing policy of limiting immigration based on nation origin. We would live up to being a welcoming nation to the ideals of Lady Liberty “Give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to be free.
Johnson fought a War on Poverty and created Medicare/Medicaid, and Head Start. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law outlawing discrimination and voting practices adopted by southern states during the civil war. He signed the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act out of which emerged the National Endowment of the Arts.
We were moving as I believed America always did- forward in an inclusive way trying to correct past wrongs. That was the America of my youth that I witnessed and believed in. The society was flawed, it was messy, we were getting mired in Vietnam.
But we had a president who wanted to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality and improve quality of life for all American through social welfare programs and civil rights legislation.
Everything Trump is dismantling now.
Trump is perverting Johnson’s War on Poverty and turning against the people, depriving them of resources, finances, and health care.
Today we are watching what we never thought possible—the transformation of our democracy into a dictatorship.
In sixty years, we went from “Do You Believe in Magic” to “Eve of Destruction.”
And I want the music to stop.
Even as I move forward chronologically, our country is moving backwards as a society.
If I had known what lay ahead for our country at 70 how our country would shift so dramatically I’m pretty sure it would be another reason to dread growing up.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.