I found this bird amongst the quickly multiplying ‘hens and chicks’ in my front yard – it looks as if it fell from its perch in the Italian plum tree, to the bed below. I don’t think the black cat who comes around every day now, and who we’ve taken to calling ‘Pan’, was the one who killed it.
I wonder which song this bird preffered to sing.
My father’s father was killed in WWII, a navigator shot down over North Africa. He was very handsome - I have my grandparent’s wedding photograph hanging in my living room – it’s the best I can do, for never having met him. They were married in Memphis – he in his uniform, and my very glamorous grandmother in a simple brown dress, no hat, a small but pretty bouquet. He died before my father turned three. I often think what this loss has meant to my family, how it affects me to this day. We have given mightily, and we have built modern lives to cover up the holes, the missing pieces – we know how to go without, and on some level, we believe that we deserve to go without.
I wish I could have met Omer Kingston Brokaw, my paternal Grandfather. Here is an excerpt from his own diary, during WWII, written in pencil on Morrison Field stationery, not dated. He was 23 years old.
“I believe that I am fighting for a way of life, a way of life in which the members of one race will be able to greet the members of all other races with respect and dignity knowing that each is free of those intolerances that encourage and permit one to look down upon the other as his human inferior. Each individual must have the inalienable right to the pursuit of his own just happiness, and society must see to it that his rights are not infringed upon by the intolerant.”
Maybe someday, Grandpa.
xo
