Land That My Father Loved

As a child growing up in rural NH, I loved Memorial Day. Now I look upon it as a day off, which in turn means an even busier work week as we do 5 days worth of work in a 4 day period of time. Somewhere in time I lost the meaning of the holiday. I only have to look to my childhood and my father to bring it back.



I haven’t gone to a Memorial Day parade in years, but I loved going as a child. I don’t remember where the parade started or the path it took to get to the memorial park in town, but I remember watching everyone marching along. The 4H kids, the local high school band, the scouts, and of course the veterans, but what I was most curious about were the women riding in the fancy car. My Aunt was one of them. She was a Blue Star mother and even though I didn't know what that meant, I knew it was special and had something to do with a cousin who had died in the Vietnam War. She wore a white dress, white panty hose and shoes and a navy blue cape and a jaunty hat. It was the reverence and sadness that resonated throughout the parade goers as the car passed, that made an impression on me, even as a child. During the services, at the end of the parade, I ran home because I was bored with all the talk and the enforced periods of silence. The guns firing in salute also scared me and I wanted to get home before it started. I was afraid the bullets would come raining back down; pulled by a gravity force I didn't understand.


My father was always home on Memorial Day, never at the parade. Instead my Dad was with my uncle getting the vegetable garden planted for the summer. He never planted before Memorial Day or after, always on parade day. Rows and rows of freshly hoed ground, already pungent with cow manure from a local farm, lay ready for seeds and plants. My Dad worked from early morning to late afternoon planting everything from lettuce to beets, carrots, corn and especially tomatoes, my mother’s favorite. It was a massive garden and it would feed us all summer and into the fall.


I asked him to come with me every year, but he never came, even the few times I marched with some group or another and I never understood why. Dad was a veteran of World War II, a member of the VFW, and a very proud American who never forgot to vote or give back to his community. When he became an old man and no longer planted his garden, did he then speak of his memories of war and his nephew who died in Vietnam. He was proud of his service to his country as part of the Air Force. And it’s only when I think of my father, do I stop to think about Memorial Day and all the men and women who have served our country with pride and little fanfare except for a parade each year in towns and cities across America at the end of May. Thank you.