Tea With Me: 11th November, 2020 Wednesday.
After watching both the Arlington Cemetery Ceremony and the Philadelphia Korean War Ceremony today, it occurred to me to do what many of us are doing today, post photos of my Papa in his uniform. But as I searched for this photo, I came across these other photos which triggered my awareness that many men in my ancestral family answered the call to serve their country in times of war. I have these photos which are some of them in my father’s line. The men in my mother’s family also served in wars going as far back as the Revolution.
It struck me as indeed embarrassing to watch the 45th President participate in the rain in a ceremony honoring the fallen buried in Arlington as his words have denigrated the greatest sacrifice a man and his family can give for their country.
My father’s older brother, William Henry Birrell, who was his closest friend and a vibrant man, was killed in an Airforce traning accident in 1941. His parents never recovered. I don’t think my father did either nor did his younger brother.
My paternal Great Great Grandparents immigrated from Scotland arriving in America is 1823. One of their sons, Andrew, served in the Union Army, and died during the Civil War in the country his parents had adopted.
I was a child in the Vietnam Era and serving in the military was a complex rats nest of cultural triggers. Confusing to say the least and as I grew up I understood more of the gray areas of regardless of what the politics were surrounding that conflict, there were young men who either chose to serve or were drafted who went and served and some came back unfazed, some didn’t come back and many came back altered both physically and emotionally in ways which made functioning impossible.
Veterans coming back from Iraq and Afganistan have sent our suicide rates skyrocketing. For some the physical and emotional cost of service being beyond their capacity to heal.
A young man who grew up with my daughter, one of the most delicious child sprites I ever came across, has recently been discharged after a military training accident went awry leaving many participants in significantly altered states. He reached out to me for emotional support a while ago and after some challenges has found peace.
When in the spring of my freshman year in college, confused about my own path about what Major I should declare, I went back to my dorm room midday for some reason between classes. Hearing weeping across the hall, I went to see who might be in need of an ear. The girl weeping, was tortured because her parents’ expectation, indeed her family’s ancestral pressure, was for her to be a doctor. She was following the premed track and it was destroying her soul. I asked her, “What do You want?” She said, ” I want to be an architect.” Didn’t take much for me to convince her that her life was hers to do what her heart told her was the right path. She asked me if I would come with her to the architectural department to sign up for a Major in Architecture. I remember sitting in the lobby waiting for her.
We lost touch after I left that college the next fall.
A few years later I was made aware of a controversy surrounding the design for the Vietnam Memorial which had been won by a young female architectural student at the college I had attended. As I read an article about the controversy, I realized, the young architect was my friend who I had that spring day not that long before encouraged to own her own path. Her name was Maya Lin.
Memorialization of the our loved ones who we grieve no matter their paths to leaving us is an inherent human instinct. We keep them with us in this act. Today is the day America remembers those who have fallen in service of our country.
Hearing taps played in Philadelphia while watching Jill and Joe Biden silently pay tribute this morning brought thoughts of all those who had passed while wearing the uniform of the US military. Regardless of political affiliation, race, creed or orientation, the oath they had all taken was to the Constitution and the citizens of the United States.
Hearing taps played in Arlington while watching the man who declined to visit the WW1 US cemetary in France using rain as an excuse, caused my heart to want to weep with sorrow and outrage today in this period of huge uncertainty this hollow hearted man is holding our democracy hostage as his wounded pride rails at the reality of his historic defeat. As he walked. forward toward the Memorial Wreath and reached his hand to touch it, I was repulsed. I felt this traditionally. sacred moment defiled in that gesture.
How Dare He.
Tea With Me 