Royal Baby Buggy Boomers

The royal baby was born July 22, 2013.

Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge.
His name was quite the fussed about thing. This may help explain some of the whys and hows it is what it is.

Prince George's birth is a big deal and is also a pretty neat thing as history and culture goes. We Americans watch English royalty with eyes, hearts and cameras like poparazzi. Nothing gets us as fired up and hawking glances at the television or internet like an English royal marriage, English royal birth, English royal scandal or royal….well, you know. I was one of the zillions of us here in the states who got out of bed early on Wednesday July 29, 1981 to watch as much as I could of Charles and Diana’s wedding before I had to bus off to school. All I remember seeing is a line of snazzy horse-draw carriages heading down the road.

The king of Belgium, King Albert II, abdicated his throne on July 21, 2013.
The kingdom was passed on to his son Phillipe and his wife Mathilde who became king and queen of Belgium.

I have not once seen a photo of the new king and his wife - and not a photo of King Albert, either. No fuss was made over the names Phillipe and Mathilde, which if you ask me, are very darn neat and appropriate sounding names for a king and queen. I know my television wasn’t tuned in to get the latest update on the royal situation in Belgium and my Google search was not triggered to fire off to look for breaking news on the ancestral significance of the name Phillipe. And can you get more regal sounding monarch name than Queen Mathilde?

There probably was not a lot buzz when you were born, comparatively.
There was not a lot of buzz when I was born, comparatively. 

No 24-hour cable news services had posted reporters at the hospital room door. No flashbulbs (remember them?) were in place and ready to blink off the moment your face or mine first came into view. No one made a fuss over your name or mine - well, except maybe an aunt or uncle on one side of the family or other who had hoped one of the family’s elder statesman/woman would have gotten a fair nod and you or I would have been named Alice Marie or Dudley Thigpen.

Most all of us were treated very much like Phillipe and Mathlide.

Something happened with our parents, we arrived on the scene; our arena of influence was very important to us and had been so for a long while; the people within our area of influence had been impacted by our parents and were now affected by us; we were also very much affected by those around us who had been present for quite some time; we grew to influence those who grew up or moved into our arena; and we carried on the best we all could but hardly anyone outside of our arena even noticed.

Phillipe and Mathilde.
George Alexander Louis.

When you were born you carried on your family’s line for as far back as you can know it and even further back into where you don’t. You became the important link between your parents and theirs and theirs and the grandchildren who will come after and after and after you. All who were previous worked together to make you. All who come after will all have just that much a part of you in them and without you they would not be at all who they will someday be. 

You have impacted history in the reverse and in the forward. 
You have helped to realize the hopes of those before you who only wanted to make a good life and the world a better place. 
You have helped build the realities of the future in those who come after you who will bring just that much more good things into the world.

Without you, the world would not be place it is, the place it was and the place it will be.

You may feel and think yourself a Phillipe or Mathlide because the rest of the world sees you that way.

But to you, yours and those who know you, you much more resemble George Alexander Louis.