Sunday Morning Serenity

My mother is the keeper of our family pictures, decades of snapshots and portraits, posed and candid, some in Olan Mills living color and some fading from black-and-white to sepia. Among them are many pictures that Daddy (at the teletype above) and my uncles sent home during their military service. As a child, I was fascinated to see their familiar faces in such unfamiliar settings—the barracks and European landscapes, the Jeeps and airplanes, uniforms and helmets. I had never traveled farther than Panama City, Florida, so the idea that Daddy and Uncle Chick had lived in France, that Uncle Ferrell had "seen combat" (what did that mean?) on an island way out in the Pacific Ocean while Uncle Guy had trained to be a pilot—I just couldn't believe it. 

Now, of course, I look at those images so differently. There is no bluer shade of lonesome than homesickness. Daddy generally sums up his entire military service with, "I hated France." He and Uncle Chick were both drafted during peacetime. And no matter how often I ask them about their military experience, what they most want to talk about is how they finally got back home.

Uncle Guy always loved airplanes. He was training in the Navy's flight school when World War II ended. He and Aunt Gladys married in 1946. There were other family weddings that year—Aunt Vivian and Uncle Alfred, Uncle Leck and Aunt Oneva. I guess everybody was eager to get on with life, once the hard-fought war was finally over.

When Uncle Ferrell came home, he stayed on the family farm for a few years, working alongside Granddaddy McCranie and helping him build a barn. He had been putting aside his Army pay and used it to install the family's first indoor plumbing, putting a pump in the old well, digging deep ditches by hand, running the waterlines, and remodeling the back of their shotgun house to add a bathroom. He wanted his mother to have a real kitchen and bath.

And maybe he just needed some time. He had been stationed on a Pacific island where American bombers were being loaded. It must've been incredibly hard to come from an island filled with explosives in the middle of the ocean to a house filled with family on an Alabama cotton farm. Eventually, though, Uncle Ferrell found his way back and had a family of his own. When I think of him, I don't think of a soldier, though I know he was a brave one. I think of his beautiful smile and the ever-present glint of mischief in his eyes. I hear him calling me "young 'un" or exclaiming, "Great Scots!" whenever he found something truly remarkable.

Our church always sings patriotic music on Memorial Day weekend, which we will do this morning. And as I was trying to choose something for a prelude, none of the typical "Yankee Doodle Dandy" songs seemed right. I rummaged through some old music and found a song I first learned in the seventies. If I don't lose my nerve (because it's challenging to play now that I have old-girl joints), I want to offer it today because one of the verses expresses what I think veterans give all of us. They bridge the troubled waters of a dangerous world. They face the currents so that we don't have to.

I'll take your part,
Oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around,
Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water
I will lay me down.

[from "Bridge Over Troubled Water," by Paul Simon]

 

Comments

[Candy Hicks]

Thanks Val, that is a really nice piece and I love reading about our family. HUGS

[Valerie Luesse]

So glad you enjoyed it! xoxo!