Armistice Day
Nov. 10th, 2006 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonThis holiday is always a triple-bang for me.
First, because my biological father fought in World War I. He lied about his age to get into the big fight, and I was born when he was retirement age. What a chasm of time existed there. Yet I still think of the doughboys on this day with a personal reverberation of sadness that most folks under the age of seventy don't have. Dad returned, and was mustered out as an old man of nineteen from an Army hospital because he'd inhaled some gas on the battlefield. His lungs betrayed him eventually.
Second, my step-dad, my true father in many ways, was a baby blue Marine during World War II, First Marine Division. He made five landings in the Pacific campaign, was first wave on Palau, known in those days as Peleliu, one of the fiercest landings of the campaign. No sand on the beach, you see. They had to chip their foxholes out of the coral reef while the Japanese rained hellfire on them. He made it home again, also at the ripe old age of nineteen, without a scratch—physically, that is. Later, he fought in Korea, Inchon basin, where many combatants froze to death. The circulation in his feet was never quite the same after that, and though he grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, he left the East Coast for good after that war. He just couldn't stand snow anymore.
Third, and far from least important, my aunt who died of breast cancer a few years ago, was born on November 11. Her dad insisted on naming her Armista in honor of the day, but nobody else in the family liked it, so they called her Maxine. She had it legally changed when she was old enough. Hard to say what caused Maxie's cancer, but she had a hard, hard life, plagued by "war memories" of her own.
I wrote a poem for Maxine when she died, but the hope in it applies to all three of my "missing in action"—and to all the others, really, who have fought the good fight and paid the price.
Maxine
Spring went screaming through the hills—
orange yellow green white purple
dying to be noticed, all along the road
as we drove away from your sickbed.
“Life gives us clichés,” I said.
But the harsh comfort of spring remained.
The dark sky broke apart, the sun
muscled through, burning on the hills,
forcing on us the heartbreak of blue sky.
I want to believe you are in that sky.
I do believe you are in that sky,
or laughing in the hills you loved,
bare toes trailing clouds of wildflowers.
First, because my biological father fought in World War I. He lied about his age to get into the big fight, and I was born when he was retirement age. What a chasm of time existed there. Yet I still think of the doughboys on this day with a personal reverberation of sadness that most folks under the age of seventy don't have. Dad returned, and was mustered out as an old man of nineteen from an Army hospital because he'd inhaled some gas on the battlefield. His lungs betrayed him eventually.
Second, my step-dad, my true father in many ways, was a baby blue Marine during World War II, First Marine Division. He made five landings in the Pacific campaign, was first wave on Palau, known in those days as Peleliu, one of the fiercest landings of the campaign. No sand on the beach, you see. They had to chip their foxholes out of the coral reef while the Japanese rained hellfire on them. He made it home again, also at the ripe old age of nineteen, without a scratch—physically, that is. Later, he fought in Korea, Inchon basin, where many combatants froze to death. The circulation in his feet was never quite the same after that, and though he grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, he left the East Coast for good after that war. He just couldn't stand snow anymore.
Third, and far from least important, my aunt who died of breast cancer a few years ago, was born on November 11. Her dad insisted on naming her Armista in honor of the day, but nobody else in the family liked it, so they called her Maxine. She had it legally changed when she was old enough. Hard to say what caused Maxie's cancer, but she had a hard, hard life, plagued by "war memories" of her own.
I wrote a poem for Maxine when she died, but the hope in it applies to all three of my "missing in action"—and to all the others, really, who have fought the good fight and paid the price.
Maxine
Spring went screaming through the hills—
orange yellow green white purple
dying to be noticed, all along the road
as we drove away from your sickbed.
“Life gives us clichés,” I said.
But the harsh comfort of spring remained.
The dark sky broke apart, the sun
muscled through, burning on the hills,
forcing on us the heartbreak of blue sky.
I want to believe you are in that sky.
I do believe you are in that sky,
or laughing in the hills you loved,
bare toes trailing clouds of wildflowers.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 07:26 pm (UTC)Lovely poem, too.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 07:36 pm (UTC)I always thought it was pretty, too, but you know how it is sometimes with names and families. And in 30s Utah it was probably thought "too fancified." It'd probably go over big these days.
Lovely poem, too.
Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 11:41 pm (UTC)And yeah, them Utah-ites have got some funky names, I tell you.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 09:44 pm (UTC)