Today is Memorial Day. I’m not sure I ever gave the holiday much thought. I’m not sure I give or gave it its “proper” due. Being a bit of a peacenik, I tend to shy away from those things that celebrate or honor our military. I haven’t read enough philosophy to have a strongly reasoned stance against war – I just tend to be against it. I suppose there are such things as just wars, ones in which people’s lives are lost in order to save people who are being oppressed. I suspect our last just war was World War II – it’s hard to argue against fighting the Nazis. But even then, things like the firebombing of Dresden (a non-military target) or the use of nuclear weapons (mostly to prove to the world that we have the might) make it at best, a just war with a whole lot of injustice.
Facebook makes it easy to take a patriotic stance. Lots of friends post things like “all gave some, some gave all” or whatever the slogan might be. Profiles get changed to pictures of national cemeteries or images of flags. I don’t know many of my Facebook friends all that well, so I can’t pretend to know their connection with the holiday. My former fifth grade teacher usually posts something. He served in Vietnam and lost friends. For some, it feels like the patriotic equivalent of keep the Christ in Christmas. And it’s appropriate to pull the holiday back a bit from its current incarnation of backyard barbecues and the official start to summer for shore towns and car dealerships. I wish there were a way to do it that separated the memorial part of it from the valor / glory of war part of it. I know this is tilting at windmills. For all of recorded human history, we have erected monuments to war heroes and generals… even the prehistoric cave paintings showed people (presumably men) with spears and bows and arrows.
I can’t remember any Memorial Day traditions as a kid growing up. I know we used lighter fluid to start the charcoal grill, but that’s about all I got. I think the holiday weekend only took on significance for me when I was with my ex-wife. She had a friend, the woman who was her maid of honor in our wedding, who hosted a barbecue every year. We would go over and they would cook up burgers and dogs. A bunch of guys from where the friend’s husband worked usually came over, rough around the edges fence installers, and we played volleyball. When our friends hit some marital snags, the parties stopped.
I remember the first Memorial Day in our house in Yardley. We had only been in the house for about three months. During the week leading up to the weekend, a lot of the neighbors were out tidying up the front yards, getting rid of the weeds that were sprouting in the cracks of the driveways, and by the curbs. That Friday, a street sweeper came through and cleaned the street. We learned that there was a local parade that started at our street -which seemed fun. It wasn’t until the morning of the parade when volunteers came buy and hammered stakes in to the lawns that I really got the sense something was up. Within a few hours, the street was lined with firetrucks and convertibles and Irish dancers and poppy queens and boy scouts. For the next thirteen years, that became the tradition – watching the parade. For four of those years, my daughter was in the high school marching band, and so we watched The Long Orange Line (that’s what the band was called) drum and pomp and toot their way past. The other thing I remember is that every year, the large pink peony in the front yard was always in full, heavy headed bloom by the holiday.
For many of us, it is a holiday that involves food, family, sunshine, and friends. For me, it’s been one I’ve had to redefine. After getting divorced, there was no more cooking up burgers and dogs or pulled pork for the family – it was just me. I honestly can’t remember what I did in 2017 and 2018. I know in both cases, I was single, because I had just broken up with people earlier in the month. Last year, I was also newly single. I’m pretty sure I watched the parade and then hung out with my friend Tim and all of his neighbors. Being far away from everybody, this year feels entirely different (and of course there’s the whole virus thing).
I didn’t realize how hard it would be to make new friends… or perhaps more accurately, I didn’t realize what it would feel like on a day like today to not have that network – to not have someone to have a beer with. Even if I was solo in those years that I’ve forgotten, there was still a sense of camaraderie of place. I was near the familiar, there was the possibility of an invite.
I think about this intersection of friendship and place from time to time. My ex-fiancee was new to the Philadelphia area when we met. She didn’t know a lot of people. The one friend in Philly she would talk about, she didn’t really care for. I didn’t have a huge network of friends, but I was in the process of rebuilding it (my ex-wife and I had very much become an insular unit). A lot of relationship advice says that it’s important to bring your own network to the relationship and to have those friends that are outside of the relationship. I don’t know that I can do that outside of my home town. I have a friend or two here in Memphis, but they seem to fade in and out. I suppose, to some degree, it’s another reason to practice writing and develop other interests….
I know it’s a red flag for some people – to meet someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends (or really close friends). It didn’t bother me that my ex didn’t have a local network – she had friends back home and in other cities, and when I encouraged her to hang out with one of my friends, she was really appreciative – she told me it’s so nice to already have a girlfriend in her new home town. Perhaps it won’t be an issue for me here or wherever I land.
I feel a little guilty for having co-opted the holiday here in this post. I feel a little like the kid with the broken leg who can hear his friends playing outside and wishes he could join them. What made my friend Tim’s gesture so nice last year was that he knew I wasn’t in the best place and he reached out with an invite – it was an act of seeing. The thing that repeatedly catches me off guard is how much work is required when you’re new and doing everything on your own. Making friends, finding a place to hike, finding a favorite restaurant, trying to date, looking for a job. I could see how being so self-reliant could turn in to a bit of an emotional callus. Sometimes, I want to sit back and let someone else take the lead.