One man went to mow... went to mow a meadow... One man and his dog... went to mow a meadow. I learnt this song when I was very little, from my brother who was a cub-scout. For years I thought Mo was a person, and his last name was Ameadow!
Tim mowed my path through the meadow today, as it had become completely overgrown. What a kind man! It was a beautiful warm day, although very hazy and smoky. Apparently there are forest fires in Quebec that are running out of control and the prevailing winds have brought the smoke all the way down here! There was an environmental warning for people with respiratory disorders to remain indoors, so I didn't run today, although I didn't remain indoors. So sad, the land of Canada is covered with snow for much of the year, and then it warms up just a little and these horrific fires begin!
We all had a holiday today as it was Memorial Day, when we remember soldiers who have died in wars.
So tonight I will remember the soldiers in my family who didn't die.
My South African 'Pop', a tall, gangling man of limited affection, probably because he had lost his entire family when he was only 6 years old. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying corps in the First World War, but he couldn't drive a car, my dad taught him that.
And my 'Gramp' in England, the long-boned twinkle-eyed man with the moustache, who went to fight in the trenches in France, was subjected to mustard gas which does various terrible things to the human body, including damage to the bronchial tubes, which resulted in his suffering from asthma for the rest of his life.
They each came back from the war, and found women they loved, or thought they loved.
Pop, whose real name was Gerald, found a girl in England, from Cumberland, small fragile Gracie, and they returned to South Africa, where my mother, Joan, and her sister, Nora, were born. But Gerald and Gracie were not very happy, although they did try very hard to love one another. It was because of his lack of being loved when he was little, I believe, and in the first years of their marriage, my mother and her sister were taken back and forth several times between England and South Africa, whenever things became too bad between their parents.
Gramp, named Arthur, was a farm laborer, who made the governess, Alice Emily, pregnant with my dad. Which fact my father only discovered when he was 60 years old. It made him very sad but it kind of explained a lot. Arthur was a hardworking man who loved the earth and his "Em" was a loving mother but rather manipulative. Their marriage lasted more than 60 years.
Then there is my dad, Jack. Born at the end of the first world war, he was training to be a pilot in the second world war when he contracted meningitis, after which he was declared unfit for the pilot programme. So he became a fitter and was in charge of fixing airplanes and making them fit to return to the fray. On a ship diverted as a result of being torpedoed by german subs, he happily found himself gazing up at Table Mountain and it was love at first sight between my dad and South Africa, and also between my dad and my mother, who was handing out uniforms.
And Joan and Jack were also married for more than 60 years, during which time they fought and laughed and loved and worked and traveled and, in the early years, produced three children, the last of which was me.
And here I am, very ambivalent towards war and everything to do with it. I despise the glorification of it all, the way every little boy wants to be a soldier, the way so much is still solved only by might, not negotiation. But I also know that Hitler, for example, had to be stopped, and I'm not sure how else it could have been done, but it seems to me there is far too much violence and acceptance of it, in our world. In games, in movies, and in days like today.
Human beings, Homo Sapiens sapiens, have lived on earth for about 40 000 years and we have used our brains to learn so much, to know our planet, our bodies, why perhaps we evolved as we have done.... But as far as war is concerned we don't seem to know much more than we knew in the beginning.
So here's my Memorial Day portrait:
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