Tag Archives: Memorial Day

by Luanne | May 30, 2022 · 5:20 am

Memorial Day Poem

writersite.org

Today is Memorial Day, a day to honor those who sacrificed their lives in our military. I am sharing a poem from my chapbook Kin Types about a sister who awaits word from her brother who is a soldier in WWI.

Once and Now

His letter, once wet and now dry, once
wrinkled now smoothed against her breast,
once a receptacle for all he could not say,
the lone poppy in the field, the striped sky, not 
the mud, men, horses, bullets, shovels.
Definitely not, but she suspects as much. 
She listens to her husband outside the church 
door, reads the casualty lists, hovers around
those waiting. Now her big brother’s letter 
like his touch on their dying mother’s cheek,
is enough. He’s been long a soldier, the bachelor 
patriarch. In the early days he wrote pages
of the trembling sweep of the Pacific, 
ancient trees and reeds poking like magic
sticks from the water, a field of buttercups
near the Presidio, a borrowed horse he rode.
Given their immigrant circumstances, the career
had seemed wise until now, with Huns like red
devils leering down from propaganda posters
jeering them with their German names, 
a town friend’s Dachshund ripped from her arms,
his brains smashed on the pavement, onto
her shoes. Shoes she showed Clara, pointing,
See, see how dangerous they are in their hate!
The knock sneaks up on her from behind.
She has turned to put the letter in the ribbon-
tied stack, so standing between fourteen years
of letters and the knock, she knows that this
is not the paperboy coming for his coin. 
She knows what a ridiculous leap her mind
has made, but still she is certain about the paper,
and it is a paper telegram. Without opening it, 
she slips the Western Union under the grosgrain.
Once busy, she has all the time in the world now. 

Clara Mulder née Waldeck 
1884-1953
Caledonia, Michigan, United States

Clara has received the dreaded telegram that will validate her worst fears--that her laughing, vibrant brother will not be coming home.

I chose a very mild–in this case British–stamp with WWI propaganda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_World_War_I#/media/File:World_War_I_propaganda_stamp.jpg

28 Comments

Filed under Family history, History, Kin Types, Poetry, Poetry Collection

Tagged as family history, Genealogy, Kin Types, Memorial Day, poem about WWI, poetry chapbook

by Luanne | May 31, 2021 · 5:20 am

My Past Week Minus Work and Physical Therapy

Let me say this up front: have a thoughtful Memorial Day. You might want to read posts from blogger Joy Neal Kidney who writes about her grandparents who lost three beloved sons during WWII. As Joy reminded on Instagram the other day, Memorial Day is to honor and remember those who died serving the United States. Veteran’s Day is for those who served and came home. We do tend to blur this distinction. Since so many who die in battle are young, they often leave no children behind. In part for this reason, more of us have veterans in our families or are veterans ourselves, and it is left to nieces and nephews to mourn the fallen family member. In my own family, only one person died during war for the United States (my ancestors arrived in the 1800s, so it’s possible that some siblings of my ancestors perished in war for their countries. This young man was the younger and newly arrived from the Netherlands brother of my great-grandmother’s brother-in-law. That doesn’t sound like a close relation, but our family was small and close and I knew Aunt Jen very well until she passed away when I was twelve. After being in the United States for less than a year, Gerrit Leeuwenhoek volunteered for this country in the Spanish-American war and was shipped to Cuba where he died of malaria. This letter was sent to Uncle Lou and Aunt Jen.

Later, Uncle Lou had Gerrit’s remains moved to the cemetery in Kalamazoo.

***

The dove kids are thriving. We see them hanging out on the railing near the plant that held their nest.

The hummingbird mama is doing well taking care of her twins. She feeds them regularly. Here she is sitting on them.

May is when the saguaros blossom. This year has been a little bit different, though, because they are blossoming more generously. Usually they bloom off the “top of their heads.” But this year the flowers trail down the sides as if there are so many they are spilling over. Nobody seems to know why, though they have made guesses. The gardener says it’s because we didn’t have much rain this year. Click on the image and you can see the flowers growing out of the sides of the tree.

I’ve been reading a novel manuscript, and Kana has been spending her time in the manuscript box, even as it gets filled up with the just-read pages.

My sweet Pear (the 21-year-old) seemed to be unwell, but now I think that she was having trouble getting up and down from the couch–and that in the early morning hours Perry was traumatizing her with his attention. I tried putting things in front of the couch so that she would have a “stairs” of sorts, but she is too fragile to learn something like that at this point. Finally, I had an epiphany. I needed to subtract from the couch instead of adding to it. I took out one of the seat cushions. Now she can step down to the couch without the cushion and then on to the floor. And Perry is now locked in our bedroom at night. What is surprising is that he’s being so good although he can’t roam the house.

Sorry for annoying you with some of my journal pages, but I am enjoying it so much and you can always skip :).

This one is in a very small book. The quote is from a poem called “Sisters” by James Lineberger.

And this one is all about the memories.

I’m moving forward on the memoir, and I would definitely call it a hybrid at this point. I hope a few people like it when I’m done because I feel better writing this version than any of the previous 18 versions. (No, not kidding). I really hope it works this time. Needless to say.

I’m not sending too much out right now, but just thought I’d let you know I have a new poetry book in the works!!! (Shhh) Yeah, but publication date will be in 2022. That sounds so far away! More info to come.

Make a happy week!

67 Comments

Filed under #writerslife, Arizona, Art and Music, Cats and Other Animals, Memoir, Nonfiction, Writing

Tagged as #writingcommunity, art journal, birdnest, hummingbirds, Memoir, Memorial Day, mourning doves, poetry collection, Spanish-American war death

by Luanne | May 28, 2018 · 5:20 am

My Practical Father (Not Always) Repost for Memorial Day Memories

Since my father was a Korean War veteran, I thought I would repost an old blog post I wrote about him five years ago. When you get to the part about him being in the hospital, remember that this first went up in March 2013. He passed away in May 2015.

###

My father was born in 1928, and the memory of the Depression is imprinted on his decision-making.

When he has a color choice, he goes with “brindle brown” because it’s practical and doesn’t call attention to itself. Until I actually looked up this color, I thought it was a term unique to Dad. And I figured it meant something like “shit brown.” Now I see that it really means spotted or streaked like an animal’s coat or like the word piebald. I suspect that my father’s meaning is closer to what I had originally thought, rather than a dog’s sleek brown fur.

I’ll go a step further and assume Dad probably picked up that term in the Army. Since he was raised by a single mother, Dad’s true “finishing” came from his fellow soldiers in the Korean War.

Dad’s always hated the color black. It’s impractical–shows dust and lint. He doesn’t like lavender either. His mother wore the widow’s weeds of black and lavender, so maybe there is an emotional terrain underneath the practicality.

When I was younger, men owned small leather grooming kits for travel. They were sometimes called Dopp kits, although Dopp was a name like Kleenex, an actual brand name. My father’s was brown, and if somebody gave him a black one as a gift, he wouldn’t use it.

His brief case was brown, not black. So was his squeeze-type coin purse, back in the days when men carried those.

For the past thirty years he’s carried a brown leather magnetic money clip.

His belts are brown and not black. And certainly not khaki canvas or burgundy leather and they don’t have a big turquoise-studded buckle.

My father looks practical and shops with a practicality born out of that Depression upbringing.

But don’t be fooled by how he looks. When a friend or an acquaintance would show up with something to sell, Dad would buy it, no matter how impractical. He bought things like:

An old non-working violin he was told was a Stradivarius (it was not)
A silk Oriental rug (beautiful, but impractical)
An old motorboat much too heavy for the motor that fit the boat (it never worked right, but I was still light enough that I could water-ski slowly off the back of the boat)
An abacus when I started 4th grade (so I could do division on it)

You get the idea.

Do any of your characters (or real life relatives) contain contradictions?

My dad is sick in the hospital right now, and the doctor isn’t quite sure what’s wrong.

###

It’s been three years and 14 days now since my father died. I can hardly believe it. He’s buried at a veterans’ cemetery in Michigan, so I can’t be there today. But I’m still thinking about him.

52 Comments

Filed under #AmWriting, #amwriting, Creative Nonfiction, Family history, Flash Nonfiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Vintage American culture, Writing

Tagged as #amwriting, #writerlife, children of Depression, Creative Nonfiction, Family memories, Korean War, Memoir, Memorial Day, Memory, Nonfiction, veteran father, veterans, Writing, Writing memoir