Honor.
The USS New York constructed from steel rescued from the fallen twin towers sailed up the Hudson River last week. She stopped near Ground Zero to offer a 21 gun salute.
Character.
In 1945, my father lied about his age to join the US Air Force. I have a picture of him hanging from a train bound to Tucson, the farthest he ever traveled from his North Carolina home. He looks like a young Elvis in that picture. The Air Force made him into a man.
Courage.
Harvey fights at night, walking along the walls and ripping at the curtains. It has been decades since he was a boy fighting in a hell called Vietnam, but wars never end, not really.
Freedom.
The first time I flew into Mexico, I walked past the Cuban gate and saw military guards equipped with automatic weapons and attack dogs. At that moment, a rattled and slightly freaked out me considered what we have but rarely mention.
Hope.
In 2008 I was flying into Newark, New Jersey. I was traveling on a small plane and the pilot made a sweep by the space that was once the World Trade Center. The absence of those buildings in that famous skyline took my breath. The next day as we flew out of Newark, we saw Lady Liberty, magnificent, strong, and green-oxidized, standing tall with torch held high.
Bravery.
Kyle and Tyler Kurtz are both in Afghanistan, sons of their father, a Marine officer and great man in his own right. Kyle will be awarded a Bronze Star when he returns to the US in a few weeks. Both men still in their 20s, protecting us and all we hold dear as we wake up every morning in our warm houses to drink our coffee and live the abundant lives that we often take for granted.
Heroic.
Smokin Hot Love Toy’s Mom was a MASH nurse in Korea. They don’t have MASH units anymore. But there she was sixty odd years ago bandaging and wrapping and shoring up the bodies and souls of the wounded.
Sacrifice.
The most memorable line from “A Few Good Men” is the five word ensemble that Jack Nicholson spits at Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth,” resonating with implication throughout the courtroom. To me, those word pale in comparison to the line spoken by Demi Moore who says, “I love them because they say nothing will happen to you tonight, not on my watch.”
One day on our walk home from the bus stop, my third grade neighbor, Michael, told me that the reason his brother wasn’t at school was because he had to have his “independix taken out.”
Perhaps Michael is onto an epidemic. Have we lost our “independix” because of our spoiled and cynical natures as Americans? Have we stopped thinking about veterans on a holiday that started on November 11, 1918, marking the Armistice signed between the Allies and Germany bringing an end to WWI? That is ninety one years of marking a day to remember those who fell in battle and those who faithfully served. In the words of Winnie the Pooh, “We must remember to remember so that we don’t forget.”
But I have to wonder, do we remember or are we just inconvenienced because the banks are closed and we have to shuffle schedules with kids out of school?
Veterans fight for our country and for us. Our military surrenders their own rights for the united rights of all of us … for our America with her politics divided and injured economy, with her flawed justice system and international blemishes, with her melting pot and salad bowl of people and all our struggles. Oh, sweet America, I raise a pledge to you and for all that is good. We, the lucky natives of your land who regard our privileges to sing, worship, pray, vote, write, speak, drink, eat, oppose, fight, and love as rights, because we, the lucky ones, have never known any different. I offer my civilian salute to all our veterans here and away, living and passed, to all those who vow, “Not on my watch.”