A difference of opinion

I'm going to say that today's creative act was working in the garden.  There are several kinds of grasses, Creeping Charlie, Dandelions, Virginia Waterleaf and other creatures of the plant kingdom who would disagree. They were somewhat rudely yanked from in amongst Snow on the Mountain, Creeping Phlox, Peonies, Hosta and Daffodils.  As Sheila Wiley reminded me the other day, weeds are just flowers growing where you'd prefer not to have them.  Who among us hasn't been plucked and tossed aside because our opinion of the value of being who we were, where we were,  differed from someone else's?

I also completed a couple of cards which I won't post until Memorial Day, as they're for the Operation Write Home "Blog Hop" -- wherein the card makers who blog agree to post a red, white and blue card with a "missing you" theme,  something from the OWH site that would inspire others, and a thank you to the American families who have given the ultimate sacrifice of a loved one.  Others are invited to "hop" from blog to blog that day and check everyone out.  Some folks will have contests or prizes ("blog candy" to win.)  I think I need to experience one of these before I get that thoroughly involved!  My family was never much for the "cemetery holidays."  We didn't have anyone buried locally -- still don't -- and so to mark Memorial Day in a way that actually acknowledges its reason for existence will be satisfying for me.

As I may have mentioned in a previous entry, I'm fascinated by my adoption of this new interest in doing something for people in the military. I came of age in the days of the war in Viet Nam -- and perhaps it was a product of being  from a girl's high school, and not really dating until college, that I never really had close relationships with men who served in Viet Nam.   Uncle Jimmy, Mom's younger brother, was a career Navy man, and I recall him being in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs era... but I don't remember stories of service in Southeast Asia.  Was it because the 60s and 70s were a time when people who didn't believe the war should be happening shut themselves off from the personal stories?  Or that -- like now -- unless you have a personal connection with someone in the service, it doesn't really affect our day to day choices.  It's not like WWII with rationing and Victory Gardens and War Bonds.

Dad never talked much about his military experience in WWII.  I've come to believe that such reticence was just a part of his makeup, and not because the stories were so awful.  He was in Burma as a supply lieutenant for the building of the Ledo Road, and talked about how the monkeys would come down out of the trees to pick sweat-salt off the soldiers' arms.  My brother John and I found a short piece Dad had written about a time he and a buddy talked their commanding officer into letting them take the jeep and drive it to where they could see "the action."


I'm sorry I've lost my opportunity to discover those stories, to lure them out of hiding.  I'm gradually learning that precious stories don't have to be of grand adventures. Sometimes they're only a sentence or two, but they add brushstrokes of color to the sepia tones of our collective pasts.

Has someone told you a detail or two about his or her life that made you smile, or made you think, or made you want to share it?  Do.  Write it down. Date it. Save it.  Everybody's got a story worth saving.