I Remember Viet Nam

Yesterday I listened to an NPR story of recovered reel-to-reels of young men headed to, in the midst of, and

some not making it home from Viet Nam.  It is a gut punch to hear their young selves in that crucible time, especially the one who didn’t make it home.

I listen and I remember . . . being a child a teenager and the television news and Walter Cronkite’s voice bringing us the news and images of war never the likes of we had seen and heard before or since, while eating my supper. . . body bags and body counts and children and tall grasses blowing from the winds of helicopters hovering above . . . marches and protests and anger in our streets and our homes . . . I remember I was opposed to the war – Viet Nam is why I became an aspiring pacifist.

I remember my Uncle Richard being there and worrying about him and the few stories he would share when he came home – bombs in baby diapers and jeeps exploding in front of and behind him.

I remember it ending and friends like Walt being spared being sent and numbers taking on desperate meaning as the draft lottery decided who went and who stayed.

And I remember the POW/MIA bracelets

I wore mine until it broke – snapped in half.

I do not remember the man’s name on the bracelet I wore.  I kept the two broken pieces in my jewelry box for years.  I do not remember when I decided to let it go and leave it behind.  I do remember he was MIA, my soldier.  I was not a person of faith at that time, but I suppose in some way, the thoughts I kept of him formed a prayer of sorts.  I cannot know what happened to him as I cannot even remember his name.  And that troubles me greatly.  How could I have remembered so much and forgotten his name?

Praying Syria Through the Night

The call comes early . . . a congregant – a Viet Nam veteran and enthusiast for Jesus and for life, is awakened in the middle of the night . . . he’s been praying ever since . . . praying that God intervene somehow . . . stay the hands of the ones who decide when it comes to this business of war . . .

In his humility, this man thinks it’s not much, this praying he does in the middle of the night.

But what I hear are the words of James, The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.  –James 5.16 (The Message).

Eddie reads me what he has written, for his prayers are so big they must be put to paper.

The words flow out of his heart and onto the page . . . wisdom for leaders . . . a better way . . . let the two sides sit down together . . . the unspoken words the most eloquent of all . . . help . . . save us from ourselves . . . we need You . . .

Somehow Eddie ends by thanking me, when I know it is I who should be thanking him, for I stand reminded that when the Holy Spirit awakens you in the night, it’s time to get on your knees.

When I Was Ten

The Beatles had already hit Ed Sullivan’s stage . . .
John F. Kennedy had already been assassinated . . .
Sputnik had already been launched . . .
The Civil Rights Act had already been passed . . .
War had already been declared on poverty . . .
Martin Luther King, Jr. had already given his I have a dream speech . . .
The Edsel had already come and gone . . .

Viet Nam was a place I knew from the nightly news . . .
and on the day I turned 10, July 30, 1965, President Johnson
signed legislation establishing Medicare and Medicaid

Memory is a fuzzy thing, so I think that was the year I visited my great aunt Vivian with my mother and grandmother, Vivian’s sister.  Vivian never married and lived in the family home until the brief time in the nursing home that preceded her death.

The house, as it was called, was a marvel of a place, filled with treasures of delight.  And because Vivian was a caretaker of the house and its contents for the generations that came after, she had devised a system to handle the desires of we younger folk: sticky tags were put on the underneath sides of everything in the house, bearing the name of the descendant who would get it on her death.

So it was a game, and one Vivian loved to be played, to go from room to room and look under every bit of furniture in search of something to be desired that was not yet claimed.  Because I was of the second generation, the pickings were slim.

I remember a beautiful silver tea service and its finely crafted wooden cart – claimed.

A small rocker – made by my great-grandfather for a child, but which petite Vivian used all her life, that delighted me because my own mother’s name was on it.

Tables and wooden love seats and apothecary cabinets and rocking chairs and so much more captivated my imagining.  But all I could find to lay claim to that day, all that did not already bear the evidence of someone other cousin’s stamp, mine!, was a candelabra on the dining room table (already claimed).

I liked it well enough, but I did not love it.  But I claimed it.  Vivian got out the sticky labels, I wrote my name, and we put the label on the base of the candelabra together, both smiling in pleasure at the gift given and received.

The candelabra was just a dime store kind of thing and when Aunt Vivian died years later, I didn’t keep it for long.

But because I had a large house suitable for antiques, other family gave me some of their things.  So today I have my great-grandfather’s hand-crafted wooden love seat with lion heads at the ends of the arms that aren’t identical and Aunt Vivian’s rocker and a table.

In my mind’s eye, the candelabra  reflects back Aunt Vivian’s smile to me across the years.  I wish I had kept it.

It Was a Very Good Year

Disneyland, Bruce Willis, Iman and I, along with millions of others, all born in 1955, turned 57 this year.

Elvis made his first television appearance in 1955.  The US military involvement in Viet Nam began with the sending of military advisors.  McDonalds was born and Einstein died.  “In God We Trust” was placed on all US coins.  Lawrence Welk premeired on ABC and the first seat-belt legislation was enacted.  The NYSE had its worst decline since 1929 and James Dean died in a car crash.  And Rosa Parks was put in jail for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.  It was the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.      Things That Happened in 1955  

By this stage of life, I am somebody’s grandmother, whether I think I look like a gran or not.  I should be wise.  Five decades on planet earth don’t measure much in planetary history, but they should do nicely for the development of an individual conscience.  I should know more than I do.  I should be wiser than I am. 

Wise or not, I am a product of my time.  I like, in equal measure, a good dance and a good protest march.  I faithfully wear my seatbelt, but view speed limits as mere suggestions.  I trust in God, but don’t much care for Caesar telling me I should.  I hate war but love a good argument.  And I believe churches and individuals, angry young people and old activists who go the distance, and one woman of color calmly saying ‘no more’, can change the world, because I have seen them do it with my own eyes.

So hats off to 1955.  All in all, it was a very good year.