Today at 11:00 am (well, okay, it was 11:15 but I don’t think the exact time is as important as taking the moment at some point on November 11th) I stopped what I was doing and gave thanks to all the people in the military – past and present – who have fought or are still fighting for freedom, for peace, and for our lives in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever. I’m not exactly what you would call pro-war but I am pro-freedom and unfortunately just wishing that the world could be a peaceful place won’t make it so.*
Because war is something that we can’t necessarily avoid right now, I support the troops who serve wherever their missions may lead them. My grandfather fought in WWII (I wrote about that last year if you’re curious), and I loved and admired him tremendously so how could I not support them? Whenever I hear people slamming soldiers for what they signed on to do I can’t help but think, “yeah, and they fight for your freedom so that you can be allowed to say that.”
Hayley’s school was supposed to have a special assembly today with some war veterans and I offered my so-called services, volunteering to go take pictures. A friend of mine who saw the assembly last year said that it’s amazing and the veterans get very emotional when the kids read “In Flanders Fields”. Unfortunately the assembly had to be pushed until tomorrow because the veterans couldn’t make it to the school and to their own services. I’ll still be going and look forward to seeing it.
Breanna has been coughing for about two weeks now and woke me up at 4:30 am. We took her to the clinic so it’s a good thing the assembly was postponed anyway or else I would have been rushing too much – not to mention the fact that I’m exhausted. Luckily she’s generally fine. He checked her ears, throat, and lungs but everything’s clear and the cough is really the only thing that she has so he told me to just give it some more time and come back if anything changes for the worse. I knew it wasn’t H1N1 since she had no fever or aches, but I thought it might have been bronchitis, which she had two years ago. It’s good to know she’s not dealing with any infections.
In the meantime, here’s hoping that she won’t wake me up in the middle of the night tonight too. I can take much better photos when I can keep my eyes open!
Lest we forget… Have you remembered the troops today?
*I’m sorry, despite my serious post, I can’t stop giggling now that I’m picturing Captain Picard saying, “World Peace – make it so!”
Wow, is that your grandfather? You look like him!
That made me laugh too. 🙂
I hope last night was a better one!
Being from Flanders myself, it always strikes close to home whenever the poppies appear and people commemorate the fallen, especially using that poem. I visited most of the museums, memorials, war graveyards and the such around.
I find it peculiar that the school would let young children actually read that poem. Only yesterday, on some TV news channel, there was a speaker explaining that, yes, it was a world war era poem written by an actual soldier, but to commemorate 90 of years of peace, it’s not your best read especially since the poems third stanza appears to call for the war to keep going and people to keep fighting, rather than negotiating a peace deal.