I enjoy Scott Simon’s thoughtful brief commentaries on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday and last Saturday he had one that caught my interest at the beginning—because I disagreed with the opening concept. I understood his point at the end, however, and agreed with that. Here’s what he said about the world we live in today.

Our oldest daughter turned 17 yesterday. It’s quite a time for a young person to have a birthday.

I’ve covered wars where I got to know families with teenagers, and I’d ask parents, “What do you want your children to remember of these times?” The answer was almost always, “Nothing. I want my children to remember nothing of all this.”

This coronavirus is not a war. Yet as in war, there are long spells of tedium, interrupted by episodes of anxiety, and sometimes danger, loss, and grief. No parent wants their children to carry that load through their lives.

But, any parent learns how children rarely remember what we hope. You may want your child to remember when they saw the Eiffel Tower or met an athlete. What they really recall is the ice cream they had at the end of the day, or a man with the lizard tattoo they saw on the subway.

I hope that when both our daughters think back on this time, they’ll remember how many good people worked so hard to keep the world running, often at risk to themselves. They’re often people we can take for granted, and identify just by a job title, a nurse, a driver, a cop, a sanitation worker, or a clerk. I hope our daughters will know their names and remember how much we owe them.

I hope our daughters will remember, too, how they found their own ways to help people now: to walk the dogs of neighbors who can’t venture out, play with children whose parents have to work, and to write cards and make calls to make people smile.

I hope they’ll appreciate the ingenuity of their teachers, who’ve tried to devise new ways to fire their young minds. And I know they’ll remember how their mother has held, nourished, and cared for all of us in all ways.

In a way, these times may help our children appreciate the fortitude of their grandmothers, who are now gone. They lived through world wars and many hard times, but carried themselves with lightness, grace, and humor.

A few days ago, I came upon our daughters as they shared a joke. I asked, “What’s so funny?” and they said nothing—and traded smiles as I turned away. I imagine the joke was on me; and I was delighted. I hope they remember that joke, and their closeness. I hope they remember that when the world may seem cold or dark, they can turn to each other and feel the sun.

The part I disagreed with was, “What do you want your children to remember of these times?” The answer was almost always, ‘Nothing. I want my children to remember nothing of all this.’

“This coronavirus is not a war. Yet as in war, there are long spells of tedium, interrupted by episodes of anxiety, and sometimes danger, loss, and grief. No parent wants their children to carry that load through their lives.”

I WANT my children, or more appropriately my grandchildren, to remember everything: the danger, the tedium, the anxiety. I hope they don’t directly experience loss and grief. But I want them to remember because we might not have to wait another century for a pandemic such as this one to hit again. In fact, a lot of scientists and healthcare people already are saying chances are good this virus will come back with the cooler weather in the Fall.

It’s important for them to remember that one way this version of the coronavirus was limited in the danger, loss, and grief was the tedium of shelter-in-place, the anxiety of wondering if somehow the virus might find you, the feeling of loss with each day’s new death count even if no one we know is among those terrible numbers. In an impatient world of increasing self-centeredness, disciplined patience and respect for the harm we might cause others by flaunting our perceived independence when it is increasingly obvious we are INTERdendent in so many ways is what has, to use the phrase of the day, “flattened the curve” in many places.

I want my grandchildren to remember the good things Scott Simon mentions. But I do not want them to forget the things many people want their children to forget—because memory could be part of their salvation.