Sunday, November 12, 2006
My birthday is at the beginning of our 5th season on the midatlantic seaboard, the grayish & often drizzly one between fall & winter, sometimes lasting to the New Year. For awhile I considered myself lucky that it wasn't closer to Christmas, but since birthdays weren't major occasions in my family - just ice cream & cake after supper & a few gifts - I eventually realized it didn't matter. Although Armistice Day became Veterans Day in 1954, for many years afterward most people continued to call it by the former name. Schools were closed (bummer when it fell on Saturday).
Over time, sharing a November birthday with Veterans Day gave me a somewhat sad perspective. I've always appreciated Memorial Day, yet its springtime date & Civil War roots soften it some, give it the nostalgic tone it had even in the 1950s when the "supreme sacrifices" of WWII were so recent & real in the minds & hearts of every adult that people wept as Gold Star Mothers - they were not elderly women - placed wreaths at the Doughboy Monument built following WWI. Memorial Day remembers the dead. Veteran's Day was created to honor many millions of living men & women who are in a sense too modest to fully embrace it. Their thoughts are usually private ones. At best, they have memories of separation from family & of the friendships & routines of military service: At worst, those memories include unspeakable horrors. There was no parade in my town. The ceremony at the monument at the corner was brief & sparsely attended. The wreaths on thin wire stands blew over in the November wind, dried out quickly, & dead leaves piled up against them until Public Works raked the small park & carted them away.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Over time, sharing a November birthday with Veterans Day gave me a somewhat sad perspective. I've always appreciated Memorial Day, yet its springtime date & Civil War roots soften it some, give it the nostalgic tone it had even in the 1950s when the "supreme sacrifices" of WWII were so recent & real in the minds & hearts of every adult that people wept as Gold Star Mothers - they were not elderly women - placed wreaths at the Doughboy Monument built following WWI. Memorial Day remembers the dead. Veteran's Day was created to honor many millions of living men & women who are in a sense too modest to fully embrace it. Their thoughts are usually private ones. At best, they have memories of separation from family & of the friendships & routines of military service: At worst, those memories include unspeakable horrors. There was no parade in my town. The ceremony at the monument at the corner was brief & sparsely attended. The wreaths on thin wire stands blew over in the November wind, dried out quickly, & dead leaves piled up against them until Public Works raked the small park & carted them away.
