I'm Trying to Understand

I got really angry at my parents this past week.

I know they loved and cherished us.
I know they were good parents.
They would have laid down their lives for us - I have no doubt.

As I went through the old photos, I was particularly interested in finding pictures of ME when I was a baby and toddler.

When I found them, I noticed that most of the pictures had something in common.
It made me angry.
It made me scared.
It made me sick.

Here I am drinking from a baby bottle.
Do you notice anything else?

How about in this next picture?
A cozy family shot, with me sitting in my mother's lap.

Let me zoom in a little closer...

Here's another one.  

Notice the baby on the right.

If you haven't figured it out yet, here is a picture of my father.

I'll never understand how they could possibly think it was ok.

 

But in all fairness, I did a little research.

I was born in 1959.

In 1950, more than half of the people in the U.S. were smokers.
In 1950, a major study found a link between smoking and lung cancer.

I found this quote in a website documenting the history of cigarette smoking.


"Is the new evidence against the cigarette really valid, really conclusive?
Has tobacco been found guilty of endangering health and even lives?
Or have many of us been scared, unnecessarily scared, by sensationalized stories about limited, inconclusive and controversial research? 

Fortunately, for those of us who love to smoke, the latter seems to be the case. Some scientists have, tentatively, indicted tobacco. But a tremendous gap exists between such tentative indictment and a full-scale conviction shared by all scientists. This doesn’t mean that you ought to sit back and laugh if your doctor suggests that you cut down on smoking. Tobacco—like fat foods, lean foods, exercise, lack of exercise, too much sunshine, too little sunshine, and a host of other factors—may be undesirable from a health standpoint for some individuals in certain circumstances. On the other hand, if you have nothing much wrong with you, tobacco—despite all the scare stories—probably is the one indulgence least likely to send you reeling toward the hospital or the grave. . . ."

In another study published my the American Medical Association, doctors at Columbia found

"when they take their heart patients abruptly off their tobacco ration, mild depressions often ensue. 

They find that among their neurotic and nervous patients, the denial of cigarettes often produces outbreaks of other, and far less desirable, nervous habits. Such people unable to channel their energies into puffing, become face-pickers, foot-tappers, icebox raiders.

Even the appetite-depressing effect of cigarettes, which seems to be scientifically well established, is now being recognized as not by any means always an evil. The smoker who starves himself into malnutrition is an extremely rare, if not a totally nonexistent, phenomenon. But the man who smokes to stifle a tendency toward overeating is familiar to most doctors."

And it took another 36 years after that to recognize that second-hand smoke was harmful.

I know my parents smoked around us when we were young, when we were teen-agers, when we were adults.  Unless we were in the car, we were able to get away from it somewhat.  We didn't like the smell.  We were afraid for THEIR health.

But for some reason, I believed they had the sense not to smoke around their babies!

As I'm sitting here writing this, I can smell cigarette smoke in my nostrils.
As I look at these pictures, I want to pull the cigarettes out of their hands.
Not around your precious babies, Mom!
You're smarter than that, Dad!

I'm trying to understand them.
I just can't.

I am soooo thankful to live in a world where my right to breath clean air is now protected.
And I'm thankful that my children have never been exposed to cigarette smoke.