Memorial Day

Memorial Day---parades, solemn tributes to the fallen soldiers, band uniforms, flowers and plants taken to the cemetery.

Are those your memories of Memorial Day weekend? When I was a little kid I was pretty sure that they had all these special events in honor of my grandfather. Only my grandfather.

Now even my mother had scarcely any memory of him since he died of tuberculosis when she was but a toddler. He lived to be only thirty years old, and through the years, with the time spent decorating his grave, his dear wife probably spent more time doing that than she ever spent married to him.

When he left her a widow with three small children, it was before the days of any social safety nets to help her financially but she knew how to work. And work she did. Back when she had to heat her wash water on the wood stove in the kitchen, and heat her iron the same way, she did the white shirts of a great many of the professional men in our little town.

Mom and her younger brother were responsible for delivering these starched white shirts after they came home from school. They used sleds in the winter, and a wagon in the summer, and woe unto them if anything got dirty!

So in addition to honoring our servicemen and women who have sacrificed so that we can live in such a society, I'll give a nod to my own tough forebears and the legacy they left for us. Hail Lisa Anderson, Feisty Immigrant of the First Order! Thanks for being who you were!