Today, Memorial Day falls on Memorial Day — May 30, that is. Perhaps it is doubly Memorial Day, then, Memorial Day x 2.
I looked for photos of Washington, D.C., to celebrate the occasion and came up with these from a nighttime visit to the monuments with work colleagues in October of 2018.
Notice how the emblems of our democracy shine out as darkness surrounds them. Perhaps a fitting metaphor for this day, this year.
In my mind now are snippets of the music played in “Call the Midwife.” Not just the opening tune, but the crescendo that signals a baby is about to be born, the whimsical notes that accompany Fred the handyman, and the ecclesiastical chords that sound whenever the nuns gather to pray.
All of this suggests that I watch a little too much “Call the Midwife” — and on that point I plead guilty — but there’s a reason why I do. And it’s worth mentioning on this day we’re all grieving the tragic loss of life in Texas.
“Call the Midwife” takes place in the East End of London in the 1960s. Watching it whisks me into a completely different world from the one I inhabit. It’s a world of poverty, to be sure, but also a world of community. It is not a world without violence but it’s a world where police are armed only with billy clubs and the only children who die are rare ones who, despite the best efforts of the midwives and doctors, do not survive a difficult birth.
I started re-watching the show a few weeks ago when I was feeling under the weather because it never fails to buoy me up. And you can bet I watched an episode last night to calm myself down. The show distracted me from the thoughts swirling around in my mind so I could fall asleep. But now it’s morning and the thoughts are back:
When will we do something about the gun violence in this country? Whatever it is, it won’t be enough. But it will be a start. And without it … well, I just don’t know what will become of us.
Over the weekend, a milestone: it’s been a year since I started this new life. The temptation is to tally up the “accomplishments,” to see if I’ve earned this freedom.
But the “freedom” is already teaching me not to add up accomplishments, to see that as exactly the sort of mindset I was trying to escape.
Instead, I’m remembering the farewell message I sent my colleagues in April of 2021. I told them that I was leaving to “write, study and travel.” And lo and behold, writing, studying and traveling is exactly what I’ve been doing.
So the only tallying I’m doing today is … the counting of blessings.
They entered the ornate cathedrals, slogging through rubble to get there. One photograph shows a country church and a lone woman entering with a basket. Another shows a hastily assembled altar, soldiers in fatigues.
It was Easter yesterday in Ukraine, but the shelling and the funerals continue. The message of a suffering savior and a glorious resurrection, the promise of eternal life, was delivered amidst the smoke and the terror.
For us, the war in Ukraine is a story we read in a newspaper, a report we watch on television. Switch off the screen, put down the paper … and it goes away.
For the brave souls in Ukraine, there is no pause, no end to the horror. For them, for now, war is life.
How wise were the Earth Day founders to honor our “other mother” on this day, in this season (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere).
For who can ignore the earth on a day like this: just warming, just greening, filled with eye-popping color.
With tender shoots and delicate blossoms.
Still far too many of us, I’m afraid.
It’s a cool, rainy Easter Monday, perfect for catching the breath and putting away the good china.
Over the weekend, I realized that the blog hit a milestone: 3, 700 posts. I love it when the numbers sneak up on me.
Blog writing is such a daily, piecemeal endeavor that I forget the dribbles and drabs add up to something.
On milestone days, I remember that they do.
For 15 years I was a Metro commuter, riding the Orange Line train from Vienna to the District and, later, to the Crystal City area of Arlington. Before that, long before that, I rode the New York City subway whenever I wasn’t walking through the Big Apple.
All of which is to say, I’ve spent way too many hours/days/years (?) of my life riding the rails of some underground transport system or the other. I mastered the art of looking the other way when disturbed people entered my car and began hectoring fellow riders — or of slipping away entirely and hopping on an adjacent car when matters seemed to be spiraling out of control.
I can only imagine yesterday’s horror on the N Train in Brooklyn: the smoke, the shooting, the blood, the panic. Terror has erupted, this time in a subway tunnel. Not to be gloomy, but it’s only a matter of time before it erupts somewhere else again.
We lost Dad eight years ago today. He was spared the pandemic, the University of Kentucky’s Thursday night loss to the St. Peter Peacocks in the first round of NCAA basketball, and now, the worst street fighting in Europe since World War II.
I wondered this morning, what he would say about Ukraine? I imagine he would think we should be doing more, but he would also recognize the difficulty and delicacy of the U.S. position.
I do know he would be retelling one of his favorite WWII stories, about the time he visited Mirgorod as part of the shuttle bombing missions known as Operation Frantic.
Dad was in the second of those runs, which departed England on June 21, 1944, part of a task force that included 114 B-17 bombers and 70 P-51 fighters, which Dad (and many others) called “little friends.” I probably owe my existence to these little friends since their addition to the war halted the unsustainable losses of the heavy bombers and their crews.
Dad’s plane, part of the 95th Bomb Group, landed in Mirgorod, which, as Dad later wrote in an article he called “Russian Rhumba” published in a bomb group newsletter, proved to be a good decision. The 43 B-17s that landed in Poltava were destroyed in an overnight raid by the Luftwaffe, and, says Dad, “it didn’t take a Ph.D. in foreign affairs from Harvard to see the outrageous deception of our Russian allies.”
Dad ended up flying deeper into the Ukrainian section of the Soviet Union, landing in what was then known as Kharkov and spending a few days with Russian soldiers. One of them “wanted to exchange firearms with me,” Dad wrote. “I was wearing a G.I. 45 and he was wearing a Russian issue. Needless to say, I had to say nyet to that proposal.”
Reading this story, so full of “Dad’isms” that make me smile and cry at the same time, is a good thing to do today, when our hearts reach out to the descendants of those people my father met so many years ago.
On this day of gray skies and soft rain, it’s not hard to see the green fields of Ireland, the shaggy cliffs, the ever-present sea, the darling lambs.
It’s not hard to imagine climbing the hill to St. Benan’s church on the isle of Inishmore, a place so silent and still, so holy, that even the most committed skeptic could not fail to be moved by it.
It’s not hard to wish I was in Ireland again, knowing that St. Patrick’s Day is probably the day you should least want to be in Ireland … but wanting to be there just the same.
Who would not be moved by the photos coming from Ukraine, by the snow falling on families as they leave the homes and country they love, by the scenes of children too sick to travel, hiding in basements while parents hold their IV bags?
Who would not shake their fist at a world where raw aggression cannot be stopped because to do so would create a nuclear war out of what is still a “regional conflict”?
The images are haunting: burnt husks of buildings, unexploded shells in playgrounds, lines of weary citizens carrying bags and babies to what they hope is a new, safe place.
Who cannot look at these images and think, how long and difficult it can be to build things up … but how terribly quickly they can be destroyed.
