Remembering

I think the key to answering the lady's question lies in the fact that she ASKED.

She noticed the difference, the alternative, and asked, "Why?" ..."How come?"

All same any change. We notice another possible outcome that we prefer...and the obstacles to it...and right away quick our 'fixers' kick in with possible "how to's."

That's what mankind does, think...in words. We notice...also in words. And we envision possibilities.

As long as we accept a common practice as necessary, we continue to perpetrate the same old, same old. Men fought, and kept shut about it...protecting their loved ones.

I was seven when my Uncle came home. He had fought nearly five years, non-stop, in Italy and then through Holland and Belgium.

I listened around the corner from the living room when he was telling my mom some of his stories. I somehow knew that I wasn't 'supposed' to hear...which made me very curious, indeed!

Fifty years later, I found Uncle's telephone number and called him to tell him I now understood.

The people of Holland were starving. Men, women, and children were falling to the pavement and dying in the streets.

That fact had escaped me for exactly fifty years...until the fiftieth anniversary of the end of WW II.

Uncle told me how the Dutch people had danced around the soldiers even as they shot at the retreating army they were routing.

He also told me some of his very personal memories. How he had to jump into the water, from an amphibious vehicle, carrying a 200 lb. pack. How he was once alone, heard a rustle in the bushes, and tried to fire his rifle, which wouldn't work. Then he saw that the rifle barrel was filled with mud. If the rifle had fired it would have exploded and killed him. He said that was when he realized he would survive...he felt protected.

He told me much more, and I tried to help and comfort a 75 year-old man who had been my champion when I was little and he was just a teen.

All of our experiences are 'anecdotal' and personal. They don't lend themselves easily to 'statistics'.

As long as those who lived them feel that it is best to keep them quiet the 'secrets' are buried in their memories, one person at a time.

Here and there 'secrets' escape...and the listeners automatically think of preferable alternatives...one person at a time.

This is how history is written, and how the future is changed...one person at a time.

There is an excellent book, 'Don't You Know There's a War On?' It's about the U.S. homefront experience during WW II...things many people were doing while the troops were away fighting.

It's about 'spirit'...how people felt and what they did.

Vera Lynn sang it in Britain, and was recognized as the voice of the people, all over the world.

Dame Vera is still alive, and so is the 'spirit' she sang.

If we want to understand who we are, we had best hear who our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were, individually, within the world as it was...and mankind's inborn gifts...what we can do, today.

F.

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