Fields of Red / Fields of White

In which our Hero walks in the mist covered mountains that are home now for me

This year I hear a lot about a movement to distribute white poppies in place of red ones. The groups behind it are saying that the red ones glorify war and that we should only focus on peace. I’m perplexed myself. My understanding of the red was to reflect the cost of breaking the peace, the awesome horrible cost of living up to Von Clauswitz and failing to conduct diplomacy by more typical means. I’m horrified at the idea that people are factionalizing this honor we offer to the past.

It is a funeral act for solider, and every one of them dies eventually. It is a human response to a horrific circumstance and an acknowledgement that it’s up to us to not let it happen again, that we have to try to stop it and minimize it at every chance we can. But I guess fighting is just something we’re good at and this is one more place to make that point.

I donate to a project with a two part mission. One is to just capture the stories, as much as they can, of the men and women who fight. The other is to bring these people with their experience to schools, to make sure that new generations have the same understanding of the horror and cost that my generation was raised with. The message, however well or poorly learned, was to take responsibility.

I’m rambling, I’m tired. It’s a day that’s important to me. To the men and women who serve and have served, to the souls who have put their lives between their homes and the things that threatened them, thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your lives. Thank you for my life.

Dear Mouse,

You’re old now. In a few weeks you’ll be packing up for work experience away from home. I’m horrified at the thought of you being by yourself because I can’t shake the feeling of you as a little girl, but I’m also really glad. You’ll be staying with other family, and I know they’ll be all over you so that they can report to your parents that you’re okay, but… you’ll be away from home. You’ll be dealing with different people in a different place. Well, okay, not *that* different, actually, missy, you were born there, but you left before you had words so we’ll call it new to you.

You’re right, technically, that you won’t be gone so long that we’ll really miss any visits with each other. It doesn’t matter. I feel the stretch in the connection to you, whenever you’re away. Our cousin Sleepy is on the west coast and I know she’s doing great there but it makes me sad to think of her so far away. So I think about you being less far away and I feel sad that you’re so grown and need me so much less than you ever have.

I am so very glad to know you, little girl. You make my world a better place for being in it.

I love you. Happy birthday.

Your chachen