A time of year has come again about which I have written several times before (here, here, here, here, and here). It might well be thought that, with five earlier commentaries about Memorial Day in place, I’d not have more to say about the matter, that I’d’ve exhausted myself in noting the ostensible purpose of the observance and the complicated, nuanced, fraught, and sometimes contradictory actualities of the same. And since it appears once again that a Memorial Day weekend is not seeing me uproot my family and relocate to another part of the world, that avenue of discussion would seem to be cut off, as well.
No wry comments this time. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
It’s true that, this time, I’m not going to wax loquacious about the ways in which the day’s observance fails to live up to its promise. I’m not going to launch into some seething semblance of a Jeremiad this time around. I’ve done both before, clearly, and it is just as clear that my doing so does no good. I don’t feel better from some kind of catharsis, and my voice is all too easily drowned out by the cacophony into which I have shouted it so many times in the past.
No, this time, I will simply make note that the day is the day that it is, and I may perhaps find some moment to silently reflect on things. Other than that, I have work to do, and I have my family to attend to, and either of those things would be enough to occupy me well. That I have both is a blessing, and I am not unmindful of it.
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Two years ago, I wrote a rumination on Cinco de Mayo, the commemoration of the Mexican victory over France at Puebla. I’ve had a chance to look back over the piece, and I stand by the assertions I made in it. I remain pleased to celebrate a portion of my wife’s heritage and my daughter’s, and I acknowledge the fraught history that underlies such of my own (trained, not inborn) heritage as I do so. Too, I will be going to look for tacos for dinner tonight; I do still love me some tacos.
As I write now, though, I have to think things are even more fraught than they were before. The prevailing political rhetoric at work–not only where I am and have been, but also more broadly–is not one that would seem to lend itself to any kind of multiculturalism, even that which was subsumed into something of a gestalt cultural identity decades and more ago. I know I am not the only one who was taught with pride about the six flags to have flown over Texas, and it continues to boggle my mind that groups of people who in so many other ways have not advanced beyond the understandings inculcated into them in fourth grade have moved away from one of them that might actually have some good in it. But then, many things do boggle me.
For my own part, I do what I little I can to learn more about that history, including the unpleasant parts of it that are often elided in the name of “teaching true history,” the parts that proceed not from Great Man narratives traditionally promulgated because they present a whitewashed vision of events such as conduce to the formation of particular opinions. And even if we assume, as many do, that the Great Man narratives presented are reasonably accurate insofar as they go, they are not representative; the records left behind in diaries and journals, in the logs of junior soldiers and on the backs of kitchen cabinet doors, do more to describe how things were for the majority of people, the kind of people among whom I would have been had I been then and not died young from some malady that modern medicine and vaccines easily address (I have never been the kind of medievalist who longs to live in the bygone days I studied, in large part because I have studied them, and I’m not much more fond of many more recent times). It is less easy.
It is less convenient to learn such things than it is to learn others. It does oblige me to look at myself and my background more carefully and closely and to deal with the ways in which those I have succeeded succeeded because others were made to fail. It is also a fuller and more accurate thing, and it does give me some hope that, rather than failing to live up to the examples of the past, I might well be able to move beyond them.
Trite as it is to say, things can’t get better if they stay the same.
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Now April once again with showers sweet
Has risen from her bed, and poets meet
Her rising with their verses, seek to heat
The chilly ling’ring winter’s grasp away
From her soft flesh, hope with it they might play
Instead. She smiles, of course; who could gainsay
Her grace what others do to it attract?
She says no word to them, replies not back
To written pleas, not uncouth or with tact,
Nor yet to spoken words they belch aloud,
Guttural cacophonies of which they’re proud;
Children will act thus when they’re allowed,
And she is old, though she is born again
Today, the pilgrimage’s ever-friend.
Leaving aside the stereotypes– Because we really ought to leave aside the stereotypes, There being no excuse for not doing better since There is no excuse for not knowing better, This day and age being what they are, And the information being yet available Despite the efforts of some to purge the archives And of others to artificially intercede– There are serpents in the land that need chasing out, Even if they were welcomed here by colors Not associated with some third king or another
Seems appropriate. Photo by Elias Tigiser on Pexels.com
Is there some saint waiting to stand beside A new Brigid, a new Colmcille, Enslaved somewhere and tending sheep, Looking for a sign that all will be well– Some boars rooting around for acorns and truffles, perhaps– An emblem in the heavens that betokens Glories yet to come when Evil is all chased away?
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One less than a full dozen years have passed And one full year since I’ve sat to the task Of writing verse that will for her praise pass– And she deserves much praise! Her smiling face, The shining heart that underlies it, grace In winning and in losing, all these trace Her path thus far, her way to walk yet light. I still confess I feel for her some fright And worry for her in each falling night, Yet in each day that comes that she remains, Her presence is a balm against the pains The world inflicts, and as she greater gains In love and kindness, knowledge, wisdom, joy, My world is all the better, all upbuoyed.
Quite the setup… Photo by ERIND DERSTILA on Pexels.com
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It is once again the time of year in which the United States pauses to reflect upon and celebrate those who have held what is supposed to be its highest office. It is therefore once again the time of year in which I find myself wrestling with that reflection and celebration, trying not to fall into the traps of hero-worship and hero-denial, that of unthinking veneration or that of reflexively cynical denial of what good has been done in office by many of those who have held it.
I am well aware, living where I do for as long as I have, that there are many who are not pleased to see particular people in the office, now or at any of several points in the past. I am also well aware that nobody who has held the office has been a pure soul; even the greatest to have sworn the prescribed oath of office has erred, has failed, has faltered. The one in this page’s image, often held to be, indeed, the greatest of them…there are reasons that his first inaugural address is little reported, while his second is perennially republished–and there are other issues that do not take much looking to find. With even the best of them thus…nuanced…those who are less must me all the more so–which, again, does not take much looking to find.
I know I end up being a contrarian much of the time, rising to take an oppositional view regardless of the notion voiced. It is not one of my more charming character traits, and I wonder as I look back now how I developed it; the practice has certainly not done me much, if any, good during my life, and it has occasioned no small amount of harm to me, physically and socially. I have been working on it, albeit not with as much success as I would like to have had–but then, I never do do as well as I hope to do. I wonder if, in keeping with that work, I ought to set aside my ruminations, raise a flag, and let it wave in the winds that are blowing through my part of the Texas Hill Country even now, standing to face it with my hand over my heart–for I have never had the right to salute it, as no few have reminded me, and with varying degrees of distaste for me in their voices as they have done so–and simply join along in the celebrations I know are ongoing. How much of a coward and a liar would it make me to do so? How much wiser a man would I be if I did?
Holidays and observances, for me, are more often invitations to reflection and consideration than for celebration. I am not a happy man, as those who know me know, and as those who read me have had ample opportunity to find out. Joy does not come easily to me, and revelry is not much more commonly my guest. I think that much is clear from my writing, as well. Even on so relatively restricted and minor a holiday as this–and it is restricted and minor, even in the mythos of the place it is celebrated–I find myself responding to the invitation once again, turning inward rather than looking outward for what I can praise. I wonder if it would be better for me to do so or if it would be better for me to have more company as a guest.
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On this, his day, there’s this to say: The fight he fought is still a fray And too few children get to play With unlike people, or to pray, And too few people get to say What their hearts bid.
The dream persists, if with delay, Despite what hateful voices say As they seek to incite the fray And bloody make the game they play As they their better selves betray, Such as they have.
Tomorrow, as this posts, will mark fifteen years that I have been a husband. They have been the best fifteen I’ve had yet, and I’m looking forward to more than fifteen more of them. (I mean, I might not make it past 57–not everybody does. But I still look forward to more, even if I acknowledge I may well not get them.)
This is the traditional gift, isn’t it? Image from the maker’s website, here, used for mild parody.
There have been problems, of course; there could hardly not be. There have been strains. Some of them, we knew to expect setting out, my wife and I; we were both in grad school when we wedded, and I was still in the folly of my youth. (I’ve grown out of it; I’m now in the folly of middle age.) Some, we couldn’t’ve foreseen. Some, we’re still managing. None would I want to face without her, and none of the time with her would I give up to avoid them.
Tree though I am not, I can be a little sappy at times. But if not about my wife, then about whom (other than my daughter, whom I only have because of my wife)?
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This isn’t the first time I’ve had a post to this webspace go live on this calendar date, to be sure. (I looked to be sure.) Nor yet was that the first time I’ve written about the day’s holiday; I’ve been a reasonably avid blogger for a while, now, even as it’s more than a little passé that I would be one, and holidays do tend to invite reflection and introspection such as prompt writing. So much I’ve shown, and so much’ve others shown, across not only the years in which blogging has been a thing, but across much of written record. To such a thing I turn again.
Yep. That’s it. Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Pexels.com
I have a somewhat fraught relationship with holidays. Cheer, such as is often demanded, does not come easily to me, nor does it linger long. To my recollection, it never has done either, although I will admit that my memory has limits, seemingly more with each day. (That’s a concern, but one I’ll address another time…if I can remember to do it.) I do and have done better with quiet and thought, with looking on from the edges of things, rather than being in the middle of them and loudly reveling. It makes me a terribly fun person, I know, but I don’t think I’ve often been sought out for fun.
Each year, though, I work to be a little…happier with events, to be a little more present with the people I love. Each year, I think it works a little better. Each year, I try to shut my mouth just a little bit longer, to stifle my misgivings. Each year, I do a little more that might be thought “normal” for a holiday, participate in one more thing that I mightn’t’ve done in a previous year. Each year, I get out a little bit more, spend one more night out and among events being hosted. Each year, I do one more thing to try to create a situation where the people I care about can be happy more easily.
Each year, I don’t do enough. This year’s not different from any other in that regard. But I do what I can, and not only on or about the holiday.
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Elliott RWI 