remember

My dad, the fly boy.  He came home safely.

There are two things I cannot look at straight on, two things of terrible beauty that cost the heart almost more than it can bear.  One of them is the atonement.  The other is the dreadful cost of freedom.  We are not real used to paying deeply for things anymore.  Pick up the clicker, aim it, and magic happens—you don’t even have to stand up and cross the room.  Kids who go to college expect to be given jobs, good ones.  When we flush the toilet or take out the trash, the consequences of our consumption are neatly carried away and dealt with – by whom, we do not know.

 My generation, and certainly the ones who have followed, were handed freedom (simple word, tremendous meaning) in a hardy little box, wrapped in shiny foil, topped with a ready made bow.  Sometimes, it seems just too much work even to unwrap the dang thing.

In the Navy.  WW II

 Our ancestors wanted us to have a better life than they had, easier, more fun—one with far less risk and heartache.  The only thing is, what they could only imagine, we have taken for normal.  We live in a happy illusion of safety, the assumption of neat and happy endings.

But the price paid for our assumptions beggars us.

 The way I see it, the people we should be remembering today – with energy and awe and horror – are not just those who have died in the shoring up of human freedom and dignity, suffering in the mud and the thunder of violence, some in the freezing hell of winter.  But also those who were willing to take the risk of dying, who went to war, who put themselves in harm’s way knowing that they might not come back at all.  Might never, in fact, be found.  Or worse – or braver – knowing that they could come back from their fight sightless, or without legs – ugly, marred, crippled, horrified out of sleep forever.  And those who supported the work of the soldiers and the pilots and the sailors—all who went out of home and took the chance of dying, of heartbreak – or worse – in order to protect the things we have held so dear.

Dad’s dad.  WW I  

He, too, came home safely.  But I think he never really left the military behind.

Without the gas mask.

And what about the mothers who sent off their sons and daughters, and the wives and husbands who have kissed their loved ones good-bye?  The children, waiting for fathers, for beloved brothers—huddled around radios, waiting for mail, now, hoping for internet contact.  For proof that their hearts might last another day.

In full regalia

In New England on the coasts, houses used to be built with towers at their very tops, crows’ nests, so that those left on the safe shore could climb the stairs, to lean out over the railing, faces into the wind, searching for the tiny flash of a sail, the first sight of a boat coming home safely.  How many people have lived, for an impossibly difficult time, in just such a place—leaning into time, afraid of doorbells, holding their breaths with hope beating at their eyes?

I don’t know the names of these two men.  They are my father’s mother’s father’s father’s people.  Maybe, then, my own great, great, great great uncles.  And theirs was a terrible, terrible war.

 And for what?  We believe that the world can be saved.  We believe that everyone can have a nice little house with a white picket fence and happy, healthy, safe children playing behind it.  We believe that all people should be able to sleep securely, never fearing the dark or the morning.  We also believe that people have to stay vigilant, protect these things, offer them to God and put them in his keeping as they do what they have to do to keep peace, to defend what is dear.

I do not believe that what has happened to our country in the last few months is right or healthy or intelligent.  I feel that we’ve broken faith with those who have paid.  I think we have lost sight of our responsibilities in the last many decades, having taken far more than we’ve given, and having thought far shorter-of-sight than any sane person should ever do.

Now, every day, after my own endless work—I feel that I am leaning into the wind, looking for the great ship, hoping  that everyone I love will be safe on it, and that the catch brought in through hard, responsible, skilled labor will be enough to keep us for another few days – safe, healthy and at peace.

I wonder how long it will be till that ship comes home again.