Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day.

The town I live in now - which is larger than the town where I grew up but still seems at times, strangely small and isolated - really doesn't do anything. Oh, I suppose people go out to the cemetery (as they always do), and there are the family picnics and times on the lake and such. But there's really no civic to-do, and I find that kind of sad.

I wonder if we're slowly losing the meaning of Memorial Day. When I was a kid, I knew (even from a pretty young age) that it was a day to remember those who died fighting for this country - and, by extension, to honor the veterans who lived on after fighting, as well.

I remember when I was a kid - growing up in a small town (and yet, it didn't SEEM that small to me, as a child - there were plenty of grocery stores and sufficient good doctors and clothing stores and mostly everything you needed...here, it's a half-hour drive, at least, for a lot of things), there was a lot that happened.

The biggest thing was the parade. The whole town shut down for the day for the parade. People lined the main streets to watch it go by. There were also events out at local cemeteries, particularly those where the war dead were buried. I also think some years there was a large all-town picnic after the parade.

Now, in those days (the 1970s), WWII veterans would have still been fairly young - some in their 40s, some in their 50s. And there were a lot of them. And they marched in the parade. There was an active American Legion post in my town. There were also a lot of civic groups. And there were the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts (back when scouting was still fairly "pure," untainted by the scandals of improper scoutmasters or the ACLU complaining about the God-mentioning of the groups). I was a Girl Scout - well, I was a Brownie Scout and a Girl Scout, briefly (until the whole cookie madness started; I decided I had little interest in being a saleswoman, and by that time, the meetings were pretty much covering stuff I already knew, or could get from library books - and there wasn't even all that much "woodswoman" type stuff; it was more etiquette and Junior Sorority type junk in my troop).

But back in the mid 70s I was still a Brownie, and those disappointments hadn't happened yet. My most memorable Memorial Day - the one that I use as sort of a template to compare what Memorial Day's become to - happened, I think, in 1976. The Bicentennial. There was still a lot of patriotic feeling then. It was good to be an American. It was something people were generally proud of, and if there were people who thought America was more bad than good, they either kept their mouths shut about it or they were generally regarded as cranks.

Anyway. That memorial day my Brownie troop was invited to march in the Memorial Day parade. And that was a big deal - a really big deal. I was tremendously excited about it, getting to be there in the parade with firefighters and Hero Soldiers and the high school marching band. It was great to be a part of something so wonderful, to be around people who were, in my eyes, bigger than life - people who had really done good stuff. (I didn't know all of the sad details of Hitler and the death camps and the atrocities committed in some of the Pacific Theater POW camps, but I did know that the veterans were men who had gone off and fought bad people to keep us safe and free.) I was proud but also kind of awed by the solemnity of the occasion and the responsibility I had to be a good representative of my troop and to show the proper respect for the flag (I would have rather DIED than done something that would have been seen as disrespectful.)

I even was picked to carry a small American flag. I was to wear white gloves with my Brownie uniform - my mother took me down to Dodds (anyone who lived in the same small town as I did growing up now knows where it was) and bought me a pair. (The only white gloves I ever really wore, except for a couple pair scrounged from rummage sales that I wore when I was in a costumey mode in high school).

I can't really describe the sort of heart-popping pride I felt - I was getting to walk with these hero people, and carry our flag, and be very grown-up about it. It was more than 30 years ago now but I still remember it and I smile. It was such a simple moment of happiness - something uncomplicated by all the "yes, buts" of modern life....uncomplicated by all the hundreds of ways people have of subtly qualifying good things.

Oh, I know. I know we're not perfect as a country. I know some people in our military have done things that were less than gentlemanly. (And I feel that they should feel even more shame because of who they are: Americans don't DO that kind of thing, dammit!). But I still have to admit that I still have a somewhat childlike view of the military: by and large, I still see them as men who go off to fight bad people to keep us safe and free. (Although I'd also add, ideally, that they fight to make other people safe and free, as well. Or that is my hope).

I have to admit I feel a certain pride when I hear things in the news, like how a large number of Iraqi captives were freed from their kidnappers by U.S. soldiers, with the help of Iraqi police and also the person who chose (probably at his own peril) to let them know about the captives.

And I feel pride when I hear about kids who were injured (many by in-fighting amongst different native groups) being helped at field hospitals or even flown to the U.S. for surgery.

(And I feel frustration and anger when I hear certain celebrities seeming to claim that our military indiscriminately kills civilians: no, dammit. We'd have fewer of our guys dead if that were the case. When civilians are mistakenly killed, there's an investigation, and often someone's punished for it, if fault is found.)

I'm not from a big military family - oh, I've had relatives, going back to the Civil War (and possibly the Revolutionary War on my mother's side). But I don't really have anyone who was killed in the line of duty, not in recent years.

On my dad's side of the family, people fought on both sides in the Civil War (my mom's family, they were all Northerners, so they were all Union).

My dad's dad was a WWI experimental aviator. In my mom's family, a great-uncle was an infantryman.

An uncle on my mom's side was in the Navy in WWII. Several of my cousins on that side went to Vietnam. (I had one cousin who committed suicide a few years ago; I sometimes wonder if the experiences he had in Vietnam - which he never wanted to talk about - played a part in that).

I've had a few younger cousins who served in the military but they all stayed stateside; they were in kind of between the Gulf Wars.

I can't go and put wreaths on any of their graves this Memorial day; I am 1000 miles away from some of them. I hope that the remaining relatives they have, where they are, are taking care of that.

And there's not really any official, civic way to mark the day here. It seems that where I live, unless you're doing something as a family, Memorial Day is mainly a day for carpet sales and sleeping in. And that makes me kind of sad. I wonder if some of our dividedness - if the idea that some people seem to be deeply offended by shows of patriotism - has anything to do with that, or if it's the sheer overscheduledness and insularity of modern life, where if a person gets a day off, by God they're taking it as a day OFF, and no one can tell them they have to help out with some parade.

(I have to say, as an aside, another thing that makes me sad: the whole rejection-of-patriotism I've seen from some quarters. The refusal to stand for the National Anthem or to show respect to the flag. It also angers me and puzzles me: yes, you have every right (accorded to you by our fine Bill of Rights) to dislike and complain about the way the government is run currently.

I complained about some of the things Clinton did, and I would have complained about Carter had I been old enough to have understood. But there is a difference between the imperfect modern government-as-she-is-run and the IDEALS that the flag and the National Anthem stand for.

America is a great country, despite what many people say. It is home to a lot of great people - people who, when there's a natural disaster, roll up their sleeves to give blood, or give up their vacation days to go and help with the cleanup, or give the money they had put aside for "fun" to help people who lost everything.

We all enjoy great freedom in this country - I do not have to show my papers or give a reason for my travel when I drive over to the next state to shop or go to a park. Regardless of what some of the paranoid types say, I am quite sure my phone conversations are NOT being monitored and no one particularly cares what books I'm checking out from the library.

Even more than that - and I think of this often, as I fit the key into the lock of my front door - in this country I, as an unmarried woman, am not only allowed but encouraged to own property. When I first mentioned buying a house, no one looked at me aghast, no one acted as if I were some kind of deviant. I am not required to have my father or my brother sign for me. I don't have to have any kind of a chaperone. That is not true of all countries and sometimes I think the protestors may forget that.

I am also free to go to church on Sunday. The church I choose; not some state-approved church. I am not stopped, taxed, or persecuted for choosing to go there. Nor would I be were I going to a temple or a mosque or an ashram or even going nowhere on a Saturday or Sunday. Those who claim the U.S. is some kind of shadow theocracy really don't know what a theocracy is like, I think

And all of these things - and more - all of these things I have, we all have, because there have been people willing to stand up and defend them over the years. Oh, I know - some people might say, "But Hitler would have never invaded the U.S." or things like that. But it's possible he would have. Like the bumper sticker says: freedom is not free. I don't think we can ASSUME we will always be safe and that the military is unnecessary just because we are comparatively safe at this moment.

I just pray that we never ARE invaded, that we never have to give up the many blessings of freedom we have. I pray that people don't let themselves get so demagogued as to willingly give up certain freedoms, because defending them seems "too expensive." Of course it's expensive. Everything that's worth anything is going to be difficult and costly.)