aleap@tnonline.com In six days I will turn 70 and I never thought I would see and hear the things I have in the past few years.

Not long ago my sisters and I were looking at some of the photo albums of us growing up and one photo was a picture of my sisters and myself sitting on the floor looking at our Christmas tree while my mom and dad watched us open our presents. I remember feeling safe and wished the feeling would never go away.

I can say that feeling is gone for me and many people I have talked to.

My parents would sometimes tell us how hard it was growing up in the Great Depression and being hungry and standing in line for rations.

They taught us respect, and took me and my two sisters to church, where we learned to be kind and forgiving. Although my sisters are my best friends now, it was sometimes difficult to be kind and loving to my siblings at home as kids.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that if you had told me six or seven years ago, I would be living in a divided country and that the horrific events that keep unfolding sometimes seem too much for my brain to even process, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Sometimes I do turn off the news because it is hard to understand why it is happening and when it will end or will there ever be an end.

My grammar school in New Jersey was a small school and it was the polling place during voting. My mom always worked at the polls and back then on Election Day, the school PTA would cook an Election Day dinner in the school’s kitchen.

Once you voted you would go to the cafeteria and be served a hot ham dinner and dessert.

Republicans and Democrats sat side by side talking and visiting and joking, and surprisingly no one ever pulled out a gun.

No one ever made rude comments about either political party - never ever through the eight years I went to that school. On Election Day, it was voting and dinner served.

I am very grateful that I grew up in the United States at the time I did because I think that was the best we will ever be.

Email Amy Leap at aleap@tnonline.com