Memorial Day...

My father, David S. Waters, was a WWII veteran. When I was a little girl, dad was a member of the local Legion. Each year he would take me for a ride in his white convertible and we would pick up a big box of small American flags. We would then go to the Boxford, Massachusetts cemetery and decorate the graves of all the veteran's. The mosquito's would be fierce, but I would ignore them to scramble over rock walls and into the limbs of sprawling fir trees to tuck a flag on the grave of each veteran. How I treasured this time with my father. On Memorial Day, he would don his Army uniform, (which he still fit into!) and march in the local parade. How proud I was of my handsome daddy, carrying a gun or a flag. I especially liked it when he carried the gun and shot the volley over the silent graves. Boy Scout's would play taps on shining bugles... one scout we could see, the other would be hidden in the woods, the notes he played echoing forlornly over the headstones.

After the volley was shot in memory of fallen comrades, I would scramble with other children to pick up the brass casings of the bullets, still hot from the gun barrel. I still have a few of these treasures tucked into the drawers of my jewelry box.

Today Chris and I took the ferry from Rockport, Maine, out to Vinal Haven. Serendipitously, we arrived just in time to see the local small town Memorial Day parade. A marching band of impossibly small children played, and a group of Veteran's from many branches of the service proudly marched. I was flooded with memories of my childhood. The smallest kids carried bouquets of flowers and wreathes studded with remembrance poppies. They marched to the harbor, where music played, a preacher prayed, and the children tossed the wreaths and flowers into the ocean. From there the parade moved up to a veterans memorial obelisk. There was more music, more prayer, and the placement of wreaths on the memorial. The honor roll was called out by an elderly veteran in smart uniform. The flag snapped overhead against a robin's egg sky. I was awash with gratitude. And memories.