Memorial Day 2010

I feel it is inappropriate to say 'Happy' Memorial Day. So I will say God Bless you all.

I remember as a child, looking forward to the Memorial Day parade. As a toddler, a Brownie, a Girl Scout...We had the fire trucks, the high school band, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, a float or two, our home town veterans proud and stalwart. The color guard. My grandmother riding in the Gold Star Mother's car...others marching to the cemetery for the reading of the roster of our veterans who so gallantly gave their lives. My family members. My friends.Then the sound of taps and the 21 gun salute. I'm not so sure it was 21 shots...I just know that I was proud to be a part of this ceremony and to this day it makes me so sad.

My cousin Susan and I would walk to the cemetery a lot in the summertime. We would go to the cemetery's cemetery for sad and decaying flowers, pilfer through them and put the best of the best on old, old graves sites that no one ever visited. Our grandfather, uncle and Sue's baby sister were right next to the water...Messalonskee Lake...and for lack of a better way to describe it...it was a peaceful setting. I always thought they had such a beautiful view. It made sense to me...as a child.

I still don't care for geraniums. They are the epitome of cemetery flowers.

I grew up in a great house. It was a Bungalow. Want to hear something funny? I didn't know that was actually the style of the house. I just thought a bungalow was, oh I don't know, just a word. Know what I mean?? My grandmother was a flower and plant freak. She loved African Violets, gardenias, Christmas cactus. She had a green hand...not just a green thumb! There was an orange tree in the living room. It never bore an orange...but the leaves tasted bitter like one (I chewed them a few times...just curiousl!) Did you ever see that movie Good Morning Miss Dove? She tells her students that ants taste like dill pickles. They do. I know....

I had to mow the grass when I got old enough to push the 'push mower'. I dreaded it...especially when I let it go too long because I was lazy. It's a bitch to push a push mower! And if it was too long...I had to rake it...bitch 2.  But now...today...this minute...I would give all I have and then some to go home and push that mower.

We had a swing chair in the yard. Someday I'll have another one. It was magic to sit and sway back and forth in the cool of a summer evening. We a closed in front porch. On that Bungalow. My grandmother read the paper and drank coffee in the evening out there. It was eerie when there was a thunderstorm. The lightning just surrounded you on that porch, flashing in through the screens...pitch black. It smelled great. Fresh.

The garden outside was memorable. Starting in the earliest of spring, something was always blooming. Against the house itself...the crocus were first. How they could break through the crusty ice and drink in the sun...is a miracle. But that was the truest sign of spring. We could have a heavy spring snow storm with 3 foot icicles forming during the night and the next day when the sun would melt them so fast that the water streamed into each bloom, and they would flatten out under the weight of the water, only to straighten up pushing towards the sun when the flood was over! 

I can close my eyes and see each and every flower there. I'll tell you about them another day.

Ciao...b