Sunday, Memorial Day weekend

This is the first long weekend I have had in a while. I adore them. I tend to play hard and work hard. The weekend thus far is successfully combining both aspects pretty well. I have finished cleaning the windows, blinds and woodwork in my mom's bedroom (we use it as a spare bedroom now but it has always been "her" room) I have hung new curtains in there and warned her about that change via phone. She seemed okay with it on the phone. When she sees them, who knows. Not that they are ugly; but they are different and increasingly change is hard for her. But her old curtains were more than 20 years old and looked every blessed year of it. Ugly would be too kind a word for them. LOL I now have only 2 more rooms downstairs and then I can start the upstairs windows. Those are a bit easier. There are fewer of them and the windows are slightly (emphasis on slightly) easier to manipulate.

There has been time to play in the yard with the kids. Time to plant at the cemetary. Time to take the kids to the park and time to worship together at church. I surprised myself by being rather (for me) overly emotional during the service. It was in some respects what one might call "typical Memorial Day". The focus was primarily on the loss of the lives of service men and women. The minister this Sunday is a veteren herself. Her reading to launch the service was from a collection of letters written by young enlisted men and women who did not make it home. The first two letters were from the Vietnam war, the second two from the Iraq war. Aside from the ages of the writers (all were 19) there were striking similarities in the way they viewed their war experiences. But I couldn't stop crying as she read the letters. Brimming with that confidence that they would survive. Filled with dreams for futures they never had, the words struck a deep chord in me. Part of it may be because I remember feeling immortal at 19. I am waaaaaaaay beyond 19 now and life is more fragile and cherished to me as an older adult, as a parent, than it ever was in the days of my early adulthood.

Part of it is also because several young people at the complex where I work are signing up and enlisting. Where only a year or so ago, the military was having a hard time meeting its recruitment quotas, the economy has changed that all up. They can be choosier again (previously slight blemishes in education or some run ins with the law were not likely to disqualify; now it might) The kids I know who have enlisted have done so because of the economy. They can't afford college and aren't gifted enough scholastically or athletically to be winning any scholarships. One wants to be a mechanic and hopes that his time in the military will be spent working on their heavy equipment. It likely will, in Iraq or Afganistan and the thought of it makes me shudder. I don't want to have one of those letters be his someday. But he knows that if he doesn't enlist, his only opportunities are really minimum wage, service type jobs. He has seen how this has worked in his family and wants more. Who can blame him? I just wish there was a less risky way to strive for that 'something better.'

After she read the four letters, our minister announced we would now sing our second hymn. The hymn was "Spirit Of Life". Totally appropriate, but I couldn't sing a note, even though I know the song so well a hymnal is superfluous. When I cry, I can't sing. Period. So I just stood there, rocking Lissa, wiping tears. Quietly, Lissa sang the last line of the hymn herself. I was stunned. I know I sing this particular song to her fairly frequently, but there was something so special about her deciding just then to show that she knew the words. "Roots hold me close, wings set me free, Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me."