"Your task will not be an easy one..."

       The following scene and conversation occurs on Utah Beach, one of the D-Day invasion beaches.    

  "The beach was wind-swept, large and angry. The gray sky hung low over the rough, choppy water, and the surf pounded the beach with an animosity. An ominous pall seemed to hang over the place. Old enforcements and battle walls, pillboxes, and even strands of barbed wire were visible while cattle grazed over the dunes in fields where one of the decisive engagements of mankind's warfare had played out in blood.

    "You can sense the terrible loss just standing here," Tim said, more to the wind than to Stroutsel, whose face was turned toward the beach, he seemed to be looking beyond time."

    Stroutsel cut the misty wind of the beach with his gravel-like voice. "'Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools.' Solomon, from Ecclesiastes, Calvin, it would do well for all of us to remember it."

    They stood wrapped in silence and reflection as if in a place of prayer as sand and wind and salt spray assaulted them. Stroutsel faced squarely into the wind, and oblivious of Tim's presence, in calm still voice spoke,

    "Baruch atah Adonai--Blessed art thou, O Lord, my rock who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. My loving kindness and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge."

    Tim stood transfixed by the moment, and the sweeping emotions that girded them against the ghosts of this killing beach.

      "We are a mere breath, our days are like passing shadows," Stroutsel's voice began to fade as he walked north, his eyes cast on the sand, looking out to the sea. Tim let him go."

        It is a scene from my 1994 novel Sanibel Arcanum, in the chapter Island Darkness and a Norman Midnight. Now an old man, Stroutsel as a boy had been part of the French Resistance after escaping Germany when his parents and Jewish family were sent to a death camp. Tim Calvin was in France to speak with Stroutsel.

        I had spent time in Normandy, researching the D-Day beaches, cemeteries, memorials and historical sights associated with WWII. There is a hard earned reverence that one cannot help but to sense.

        

        These last few days boys who fought on those beaches, who watched friends die and who endured the hell of it 80 years ago have been back. They are men now100 or in their late 90's. In their weakened and rheumy voices they've been telling us what it was like, though today one vet said, "you never forget."

        

“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely ... I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. General Dwight Eisenhower 

        We are in their debt.

        See you down the trail.

DIFFERENT CLIMES DIFFERENT TIMES

GOING BACK

   Though he meant it differently, Thomas Wolfe's title You Cant Go Home Again has been nagging around the edge of my mind. A deeper dive into that in a moment, but I wonder if some of you don't find yourself wrestling with Boomer Blues, prompted by the signals that life moves without regard to our wish that good things not change? 
   Here's the trail of this chain of thoughts;  We're back on the West coast after a couple of magnificent weeks with eldest Kristin and her friend Richard.  Magnificent because we cherish family time and because hospitality, weather and relaxation were extraordinary.

    Reading, relaxing, napping and not always in that order.

     The tropical clime, warm trade-wind breezes, balmy evenings and lack of drought created a comfortable cocoon from which to cogitate and reflect.

    It struck me that I've adopted a Cambria drought tolerant ethic. A quick and passing tropical drenching was a magnificent symphony of senses. But I felt guilt at showering at length or watching plants being watered. 

 Naples is nothing if not elegant and caloric. This calorie issue is a fault line of concern for a boomer jock.

   A jaunt to Ft. Lauderdale between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway provoked thoughts about  extraordinary wealth and spending of some of the 1%. For a journalist of Scot's heritage, that can inspire what is a full on rumble of pondering and argument.

   But it was the return to our beloved Sanibel Island that drove me into the land of the Thomas Wolfe -You Can't Go Home Again permutation.  Sanibel has always been a special home, a place of great joy and celebration, setting of two of my novels and where we once owned a home.

     We'd visit these rare Gulf beaches, seeking refuge from winter. Our girls grew from tots to mature women, shelling with their mother, building sandcastles with their dad and preparing for dinner at our special places like Jean Paul's and The Mad Hatter. Family vacations came at the end of month long countdowns, filled with anticipation.

    Getting to the island, a rare east west barrier reef island that is mostly wildlife preserve, was always a tonic for the soul. It always meant renewal and celebration with friends.

    But this year was different. The joy and luster was missing. Certainly the serious health concerns of dearest friends, the complexities of aging and the changes wrought by time imposed themselves.

  As we strolled the expansive beach, pausing where we spent so many springs in celebration, it was not joy, but a sadness over a mysterious loss that I felt.  

    Perhaps the Pacific serenade of my Cambria has weakened the magic song of the Gulf. The sun is bright still, the colors are vivid, and it is more green than my California when our sparse rainy season ends, but it just isn't the same.

   But neither am I.  I am older, my children are women, too many friends face health issues, some are gone. The career I took respite from on the Gulf beaches, is past and now seems of much less value that I once gave it. Life's order of things has changed.
   I wondered if I was slipping into a melancholy or depression. Was I somehow cheating the zest of life? No, I argued with myself. Concern for friends, sadness at loss, the inexorable movement of time are all part of the journey. There too is the truth that we cannot go back, we  do not recapture youth. And thus, memory is a gift. That is how we visit where time does no harm. 
    Our task then is to create new memories, as vibrant as we may. In that way the good old days remain good though old and as my Island friend Dave said, "we celebrate each day."

See you down the trail.

MEMORIAL DAY-DECORATION DAY

REMEMBERING

and

WE BRING YOU A SMILE

A RE-POST FROM THE ARCHIVE

     My grandmother and her sisters used to call it "decoration day," the day you took flowers to decorate the graves.  It was always a Memorial Day tradition, to take flowers to the cemetery and to listen to the Indianapolis 500, "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing," on the radio.

     It is a weekend to remember, not only those who were lost in the service to our nation, or those who served, but to remember all of our family and loved ones.

      My father and Mother, pictured above were diligent about remembering. That is probably why, whenever I am in Indiana, I visit the cemetery and place flowers.

     This weekend I'm across the country, but I remember those trips over the decades. I also remember generations who now rest in peace, especially brothers John and Jim, taken in their prime.

John David

James D

      

If you wish, here is a beautiful moment of reflection.

NOW ABOUT SMILES

HERE'S SOMETHING TO PUT A SMILE INTO YOUR WEEKEND.  BE SURE TO WATCH THIS.

SEE YOU DOWN THE TRAIL.