Decoration Day

May 30^th used to be called Decoration Day. There were parades. Stores were closed. It was a day for soldiers. And picnics. I remember Decoration Day and when Congress passed the law changing the holiday to the 4th Monday in May so that we could have 3-day weekends. It was gradual, but we lost Decoration and gained Memorial. Today we recall more than fallen servicemen and women, and include all whom we have loved and are gone. It’s the unofficial beginning of summer. Instead of closing, many stores have sales to entice people in. It’s still a weekend for picnics.

Patriotism has taken different forms in my lifetime. Foreign flags are proudly displayed next to the stars and stripes on porches and front lawns in my neighborhood. I doubt that kids sing Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean anymore (“thy banners made tyranny tremble when borne by the red, white and blue”), but we boomers knew all the words to that along with so many other songs promoting nationalism.

Coming of age in the Vietnam War era meant we could be participants in rallies, marches, campaigns, screaming matches that divided our country into two. Each side was so sure they were right. An important lesson we have learned since then is to separate the war from those who fight in it. Our understanding of the horrors played out in the reality of war and their impact on those engaged in planning and carrying out defensive and offensive actions, while so much better than decades past, is still in its infancy. A poignant phrase that has entered our conversation is wounded warrior.

We saw our country divided again after the September attacks 15 years ago and see and hear it being played out in the pre-convention/pre-election rhetoric. The media mostly frames events in extremes that result in “I’m right and you’re wrong” thinking. Globally we seem to have lost our ability to think and act with the word ‘compromise’ in mind and consequently so many aspects of our world are stuck.

Decoration Day began as a way to honor veterans from both sides of the Civil War. On so many fronts civil skirmishes continue to divide our society. Perhaps in the common honoring of the past we can find some common ground for today and tomorrow. Let’s find ways to encourage dialogue instead of diatribes. Otherwise, the number of those we will be honoring on this day will only continue to grow.

Marilyn

Portions originally published in a 5/30/2011 musing

It keeps going and going

Do you have a family treasure and that you enjoy? That question contains many elements. There is possession. Someone had it before you and there will be continuity when you pass it on. Age is implied, meaning your treasure is at least one generation old. There is a family connection, either your family of origin or family of the heart. Then there is the hint of value, not that the item itself is necessarily valuable, but that its value is based on who it came from, how it was acquired or what it represents. Finally, there is the aspect of joy; do you get pleasure out of being the current steward?

I have my grandmother's mantle clock. This German made clock was a wedding present to Ella and Ferdinand Huebel in 1895. It’s the kind where the Westminster chime announces 15 minutes and then counts off the correct hour. Grandma gave it to my parents when they got married in 1928. There is a picture of my brother from the early 1930s where he is in a playpen in the foreground and the clock is visible in the back.

By the time I came along, however, the clock was packed away in the attic where I found it when I was in my 20s and learned its history. I asked if I could have it. My father's best friend, Bill, was a clock repairman, so he got the insides working again and then my dad refreshed the wood on the outside. In 1974, I carried it from Buffalo to Chicago on an American Airline flight, carefully stowing it on the floor under the seat in front of me, then through O'Hare, and into the first apartment I had on my own. 

Bill's work kept the clock going for 20 years until some small piece gave out. After asking around, I found a skilled craftsman, one who loves his life's work among other's treasures. Once he located a fairly rare part, home it came, and continued to work for another 20 years, until one day when I wound it, there was a loud 'that doesn't sound good' noise that made me think that I had overwound it. But no, another original part had given out, said my repairman, and he told me it would very hard to find but he would look or see if he could get someone in his network to make a replacement. 

For the next two years he searched while I grieved the empty spot where the clock should be. I missed my weekly connection with my maternal forebears who turned the key every week before me, or thinking about the picture of my brother or my dad sanding and staining the wood. Finally one day I stood in the clock shop almost in tears and said that I simply wanted my treasure back. He proposed a different solution. He would remove the original mechanism and replace it with a modern one, but he would keep searching for the part it needs. I agreed.

In October, 2013 I brought it home. Batteries replaced my need to wind up the clock every five days. Two weeks later when we 'fell back' to daylight saving time and I moved the hour arm, it came loose and fell to remain permanently pointed at the number 6. The clocked chimed, the minute arm moved around, but the clock only told the correct time twice a day. Five weeks ago the batteries finally gave out. So, last Saturday the clock made another trip to the repair shop, which is why I can't show you a picture.

For the last year I've been waiting for the clock to stop working, but the batteries kept going and going. As does the connection through the ages. From the only grandparent I ever knew, to my parents. It doesn't matter that I don't remember the clock ever being on display. I know they used it during my brother's childhood and were glad to get it out of the attic. They liked seeing it when they visited my home. When I recently updated my will, I noted which of the next generation will inherit the clock. I think I'll print out a copy of this and tape it to the bottom.

Whatever family treasure you have that needs to keep going and going, make sure that all the stories about it are known and recorded. They are an important part of its value.

Marilyn

The kindness of strangers

Longtime readers may remember that I have no sense of direction and the gene that interprets maps is missing from my DNA. I can get lost if there are only two houses on the street. After my recent vacation, I can add Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Vienna to the list of cities where I have gotten lost. In the first two I wasn't necessarily lost, just turned around a bit, and once I asked someone a question like "which way is the river?" I got my bearings. Also, I had friends who were just a phone call away should I really need to stand there and say, "I'm at the statue of the crusader, come get me."

A store clerk in Dubrovnik left her post to walk me outside and down the block to point me in the right direction. In Sarajevo, a young Muslim woman from whom I bought a couple of scarves asked other merchants to help me get to where I wanted to go, although their combined limited English and my lack of Bosnian hindered our conversation. Through sheer luck I found the fruit market. Years ago an elderly woman walking her dog in a park on the South Side of Chicago directed me to the Dan Ryan and on a rainy day in London a very tall man with a large umbrella escorted me across a busy street to the tube station. 

Not so in Vienna. I was on my own for the most part. Lovely city. Historic city. Turn a corner and there is a fountain or a former palace that is now a government building. Turn another corner and you're in a small alley with a few stores and a cafe or an international glass exhibition. Look up and over and there is the top of a cathedral. Stop a stranger because you got off at the wrong train stop or exited the wrong way and ask for directions? Nothing.

When I turn the tables, I wonder about my own responses to people asking for help or direction. Am I a Bosnian or a Viennese? Mostly I think about those folks at intersections with 'homeless and hungry' signs. They are looking to strangers for the basics, but society has taught us to be skeptical, although I don’t get why anyone would choose standing in the cold, hot, rain and wind as part of a scam. Society has also taught us to not look, to pretend they are not there. So the choices are to ignore or to look at and shake your head no. I used to carry granola bars in the car to distribute but have gotten out of that habit. Yesterday I picked up a couple boxes and with each one I give away I’ll remember the kindness from strangers in my own life.

 

Marilyn

Beneath the surface

Muhammad, my 34 year old tour guide in Sarajevo, showed me the shrapnel he has had in his leg since he was hit by mortar shells in the early days of the Bosnian war. He was a bored 10 year old boy who didn't truly understand why they had moved to the basement and who lost the blissful naiveté of childhood when he snuck out one night to kick around his soccer ball. While Muhammad has turned his shrapnel and all that accompanied his experiences of the 4 year war into his passion and life's work, I realized that all of us have shrapnel of sorts that we may not be dealing with so positively.

Shrapnel is just under the surface. It is the residual effect of a trauma or deep hurt, a forever shadow that can cast doubt, fear, uncertainty, dread and undermine our self-confidence. We can forget about it for long periods of time until our body or psyche gets rattled by certain triggers. Some people, like Muhammad, have found a way to excise the spot and thus have a sense of healing and relief. Some people spend their life trying to ignore it or push it farther down.

How we handle our individual shrapnel has helped define who we have become. The fact that we all have hurt and pain should bring us together, but too often separates and isolates us. We make our anguish a secret, giving it more power. We are protective of our own suffering and find it hard to reach out and be vulnerable. Couples and families who struggle with fertility, addiction, mental illness, financial insecurity, well, all the troubles of life, either deal with the issues and resulting shrapnel out in the open and together or send up splitting apart.

Muhammed wears his shrapnel as a point of pride. He survived. As we walked by buildings still bearing mortar and bullet holes, he talked about the collective shrapnel that Bosnians share, how coming out the other side of the war has made them a stronger people. Power of all kinds and access to it is what universally divides us. Events like the Bosnian war, like 9/11 and the current fires in Canada provide common emotional shrapnel to a neighborhood, community, a nation and can bring us together one minute and, like the families mentioned above, separate us as we each deal with the consequences in our own way.

Being with Muhammad was humbling, fun, somber, eye-opening and challenging. It was a good afternoon that entertained, educated and made me think. Now I pass a piece of my vacation along to you. Shrapnel is very personal no matter how it got there. This week let’s all take a stab at facing one piece of shrapnel with the aim of changing its role in our lives. Let’s be like Muhammad.

Marilyn