Pearl Harbor, Normandy, and 9/11

 Last month, I had the privilege to visit Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. We experienced the audio tour, which had many interviews with survivors and other citizens on the island. 

The Stars and Stripes at Pearl Harbor

In 2006, I had the privilege to visit Normandy, France. We visited the American Cemetery, as well as the Omaha, Utah, Gold, and Sword beaches. 

For days after my visit to Pearl Harbor, I could not get the the parallels and juxtapositions between these two places (and also the events of 9/11) out of my heart and head. With deep apologies to those who already understand better than I ever will the events of January 7, 1941, I would like to offer these reflections. 

Pearl Harbor and 9/11

Even though the U.S. had some intelligence that there would be attacks soon, both the attacks of January 7, 1941 and 9/11 came as a surprise. 

They had both been carefully planned. The Japanese had worked on the Pearl Harbor plan for over a year. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had worked for longer than that. They both were coordinated attacks on multiple targets to happen in a single morning. (I had not realized that there were multiple targets that morning; not just Pearl Harbor. The Japanese also attacked other U.S. and British bases, as well.)

They both happened during peacetime. 

They both would usher us into war. I didn't realize before our visit how bad the relationship was between the U.S. and Japan. I didn't know that Japan had been aggressively expanding their territory for a decade. 

Of course, 9/11 wasn't sponsored or carried out by a particular country, in that, the events differ widely.

The attack on Oahu was the first time that radar had been used as anything more than a technological curiosity. (I also had the opportunity to see where radar was developed during a boat ride on the Potomac, so I get interested in the history of radar.) Unfortunately, the blips that the radar was giving were assumed to be inbound planes expected from California, instead of the 353 Japanese airplanes that were involved in two different waves of attack.

 https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/pearl-harbor-fact-sheet-1.pdf

It was also a permanent shift and change in the methodology of warfare. Before Pearl Harbor, ships would battle one another at sea. December 7 began the era of the aircraft carrier; ships, planes, and other targets would be hit from the air rather than out at sea. 

Although the interviews during the audio tour occurred years after the event, you could hear the defeat in the voices of the personnel that survived that day: "We didn't know. We couldn't have guessed what was coming. Even if we had understood, I don't know that we could have prevented it." My feeling is that those at Pearl Harbor felt as if they had let the U.S. down, that they should've known, that they could have protected better in some way. 

I believe that feeling was present around the events of 9/11. Who could have guessed that airplanes would be used as missiles? Before 9/11, there were hijackings, yes. But only to go someplace other than the planes' original destinations. Unimaginable! 

Because of 9/11, this Gen-Xer felt very deeply the disorientation, surprise, and defeat of those service people as I heard their stories of December 7.

Anchor of the USS Arizona (one of three)

Pearl Harbor and Normandy

The American Cemetery at Normandy is vast; I took time to walk the length of it. The amount of American service people interred boggles the mind. It's a very sobering place. 

American Cemetery at Normandy

Touring the beaches of D-Day was also an undertaking to be done with reverence. Craters, bunkers, and tank roadblocks are still present. 

Anti tank blocker (I think they're called hedgehogs)

  Pointe du Hoc; between Utah and Omaha beaches

Although the feeling in Normandy is very somber, it is also very different than the feeling at Pearl Harbor. 

At Pearl Harbor, there was a sense of futility, defeat. 

In Normandy, there is a noble feeling. Pearl Harbor was the first salvo in a six year war. D-Day was the turning point in that war. D-Day marked the climb upward. 

So much life was lost on French beaches that day. Yet there is a feeling that we, the United States, were doing something good. Good for France, good for the world. Instead of defeat, victory. Instead of getting caught by surprise, we were the "white hat" guys. 

Thoughts and Questions

I learned about the Axis and Allied powers grouped together in a history class. Because of this, I lumped together all the efforts of Germany, Italy, and Japan in my mind as if they were working in complete concert with one another. Now, I'm not sure that's what was happening. I have so much I don't know. I know that in ways they were working in concert, but I am now more awake to the similar ideological lines and military actions that formed separately but brought them together. The more I learn, the more questions I have. 

Having lived during the era of 9/11 and also having visited Normandy made my feeling about Sunday, December 7, 1941 quite intense. Days later, I got teary talking through these thoughts with Mom and Jim.

I have much gratitude to the historians and others who put together the visitor's center at Pearl Harbor so well. It is because of their good work that I am able to interact with these thoughts and feelings. 

Because I am a post-Enlightenment American with a sitcom-long, episodic orientation, I wish for a lesson to learn. I wish for some retroactive solution and comfort that I could give to those on Oahu that day; or to the nation as a whole. 

But all I can do is bear witness. Bear witness to the parallels, the juxtapositions, the surprise, the loss of life. The loss of heart. 

As I get older, I realize that bearing witness to tragedy is sometimes all there is to be done. But I am also convinced that it is more important than I could have realized.  

I am thankful that I've had the chance to see and think over these things. 

To bear witness. 

Thoughts About Oahu

Oahu Sunset-photo by Jim Lenk

1. I've had the chance to be at a lot of amazing beaches in my life. Grand Bahama, Eleuthera, Copacabana in Rio, etc. I've seen better sand than on Oahu. (Best sand so far? The Bahamas or Gulf Shores, AL) But I've never, never seen so many different colors of blue in the ocean as I did in Hawaii. Unbelievable. Gorgeous.

2. Green River soda tastes like lime. Not sour, but sweet... like lime jello, almost. Delicious!

3. I never see a foodie review of Oahu, but there should be one. I hope to do a post soon. It was pretty amazing!

4. Getting used to snorkeling takes a hot minute. It was a process of realizing that I AM breathing through my mouth, and I'm actually okay. Kind of like after surgery with a catheter ("you ARE peeing, it's okay"), but opposite. And a lot more fun!

5. Every sunset I've ever seen in every place I've ever been is beautiful because the sun lights the clouds up different colors. But it's not that way in Hawaii. It's the weirdest thing... the actual SKY is what's changing colors, not the clouds. Jim has a theory that it has to do with the sunlight refracting off the expanse of ocean after the sun has dropped under the horizon. I used to see those tacky paintings on black velvet that have the palm trees, beach and clouds black with the sky vibrant colors. I thought it was crazy. Now I know that the artist was just painting what it actually looks like!

6. I am the type that needs to write. I need to write for two reasons: 1. to process experiences, and 2. to remember. Hawaii has made me need to do both.

7. I love that I got to take my mom. It was a more outdoorsy/active vacation than I usually do with her. I hope she had a good time.

8. In my opinion, Hawaii is best enjoyed by strong swimmers. If you don't love water, you might want to skip it. But I LOVED it.

9. Dole Whip is everywhere. Everywhere! You don't need to go to Dole Plantation to enjoy it.

10. I learned that the beaches with powdery sand aren't the best snorkeling spots because the powder makes the water murky. I also learned that good snorkeling weather is opposite good surfing weather (not windy/windy). So the happiest Hawaiian is probably someone that likes both snorkeling and surfing; something to love in every weather condition!

11. Why are tropical ocean fish so colorful and inland fish so gray?

12. Hawaii's takeover by the U.S. was pretty despicable. They deserve to be a sovereign nation, if that's what they want.

13. I don't know how long it will take to get me back on mainland time, but so far it's not one day. Maybe by the end of the week?

14. If something is "loco moco," it means that it's a protein served with scoops of rice and an egg. (Maybe also brown gravy, but not always.)

15. The tropical sun is super intense. Midwesterners, you will do well to lay down a base tan before you go. I was religious about staying in shade and reapplying sunscreen, and I still burned. Less so when I was fully in water than when walking around, so there's that.

                                      

Sustainable; Notes on Our Weird Ecumenical Life

Lots of ladies I know like to choose a word for each new year that they are going to focus on. It’s a fine idea, but one I’ve never resonated with. As a teacher, that’s probably because my new year doesn’t really start each January, it starts in August. 

 

If I were going to choose a word for this next school year, it would probably be sustainable. I can’t do what I did this last year during pandemic teaching and my Master’s degree again. I can’t live at that rate. My health has taken what I worry will be a permanent toll. I’ve had no time to pay attention to my heart or soul, which are in shambles.

 

This is no way to live. 

 

But there are ways that I was living unsustainably pre-pandemic. Like trying to go to two churches and meaningfully participate in both. My husband is Presbyterian and I am Orthodox Christian. We decided we would both go together to both churches. This idea only works because we were fairly confident we would have no children; and we didn’t.

 

 

Right before the shutdown in March 2020, Jim and I had hatched the plan of attending St. G for the Lenten Presanctified Liturgy, and Eastminster on Sundays. That way, we were able to be with all our loved ones each week for a period of time. But then, the shutdown. 

 

Since my vaccine, I am experiencing again how hard it is to keep up with both. 

 

I’ve learned that going to two churches is like having two sides of the family. I love them both. I need them both. I find God in both, and my heart/soul/mind/life seems to require the ministrations of both. (Not everyone is such a wretch that they need two churches constantly speaking into their lives; but I am.)

 

Like two sides of the family, both churches cycle through taking up more time than the other. Orthodox Holy Week. Keeping up with all the (completely) Protestant family’s holidays: Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, family visits in town…. That stretch of time gets busy on the Protestant side. 

 

And even though we don’t have children together, we do have children whose church attendance depends wholly on when/where we go to church. They don’t go to church independently. This feature is complicated even further by Jim’s hospital work schedule which means that he isn’t at church at all one or two Sundays per month. And those are times that I can go to my church. But if I do, there’s an eighteen year old that just stays home. With him under our roof, we are still responsible for his soul a bit, yes? 

 

In the meantime, I have godsons and goddaughters I don’t see enough.

 

This Twister game of liturgical logistics is eased by attendance at Wednesday night classes at my church. We have been able to join a delightful small group at Jim’s church. These times outside of Sunday morning help us stay connected. 

 

And I just don’t know. 

 

The school life sustainability is eventually just going to look like my setting a boundary, putting my laptop away, and refusing to let work be 85% of my life. I can find habits that will make me more efficient in the classroom; they will assist this. But eventually it will be a matter of establishing healthy boundaries and simply walking away from the continual press of all the things. 

 

Church is harder. 

 

And I just don’t know. 

 

Since this ecumenical life is like participating in family, I don’t think there’s a way to streamline it into “sustainability.” It has to be lived organically, with the needs of all thrown into the pot and honored. And nurtured. But addressing those needs will cycle, like needs in a family do. 

 

Entering back into my post-vaccine life, I need to just enter into that organic flow again. 

 

And to all my friends at both churches: I love you guys. I need you guys. I miss you guys. 

 

Heaven for me will be when we’re all in Eternity with Him; finally in one church. 

 

 

 

The Daily Blue

The Daily Blue:

So, this year I had some quirky kids. I always do, but some of them were downright mysterious quirk. For example, I had one student who, every day (every DAY!) had part of a blue crayon that would be sitting unobtrusively behind or beside his desk.

It was always just PART of a crayon, usually a small part. It was unfailingly blue, no other color. It could either be swathed in its paper cocoon, or not. Most days, I asked him to throw it away, which means that somehow he threw away much more than a whole blue crayon. MUCH more, over the course of the year. I've never understood it.

Some days, I WOULDN'T ask him to throw it away out of mere respect for the blue crayon. Its blueness. Its tenacity.

This group of kids and their quirk were in some ways harder to say goodbye to than most.

Much of that is because the kids themselves weren't altogether sold on the idea of summer, not completely happy about it. And why should they be? We haven't had a school break without major existential angst since December 2019.

One student (who I honestly didn't think liked me all that much; I'm an acquired taste) said to me, "...but what I am I gonna do WITHOUT you?"

So, since school's been out and my encounters with the crayon Daily Blue, I've been working to shake my own teacher blues. I've already seen plenty of social media pics of kids on vacation; pools, meals out, general hijinks. But I sincerely hope these kids get better than what they've had. I hope this summer is a truly good and carefree school break for them.

My quirk kids deserve better than blue.

The Ghost of Covid Past

In the region where I live, not enough people are vaccine-ing up. 

 

Because I am vaccinated, I have effectively ended Covid-19 inside my own body. In my body, that threat is past and I am free. Not so for my community. Not so for my elementary school job. 

 

It’s the next to last day of school. All I can see is Covid variants on the horizon; ones that we’ll have to make a new vaccine for. Which means we’ll have to wait for it to be produced.

 

Again. 

 

We’ll have to teach both remotely and in person at the same time again, because people will have to quarantine again. We’ll have completely Remote Learning again. 

 

We will have to teach without small groups again, or limit the exposure time severely. We will not be able to do cooperative learning again. Kids stuck in desks for hours. AGAIN. (For non-teachers, these are the WORST of the in-school Covid precautions. Covid precautions fly in the face of good educational practice.)

 

I was always someone who took my medicine. A year ago today, I would have never dreamed that there would be people who would not take their medicine. A year ago today, I had hope. 

 

I was in deep grief. I worried, mostly for my students and their families. But I had hope.

 

I am losing hope; I have lost hope. 

 

I can’t do this school year on repeat, ad infinitum, forever. 

 

I hear people talk about “living in fear” of Covid. That’s not me. My husband has been working at our local hospital for 20+ years. Day in and day out, he’s lived with droplet precautions. He knows exactly what they mean and don’t mean. He’s very comfortable with them. 

 

We have not lived in fear of Covid. We have lived in reality of Covid. 

 

We ate out indoors together. We traveled. We masked. We stayed in a very small bubble. We worked to serve our students and our patients, to stay healthy for them. And we did. We know how to live with this. 

 

But I can’t do this school year again. 

 

If a vaccine resistant variant arises (and in my region the way things are going, it will), we will have to wait for a second vaccine and then just pray that people decide to take their medicine the second time, because they didn’t take it now.

 

This is a worldwide pandemic, and many countries still don’t have the vaccine. How arrogant are we that we have it, and can’t be bothered? 

 

I can’t do this school year again and again. This cannot be my new career normal. 

 

I will have to find another career. 

 

And then what will I do?

 

I am literally made for teaching, I have teachers generations deep on both sides of my family. I don’t want to do anything else… What’s a more valuable, more interesting, and more fun way to get to spend my days on this earth than teaching kids how to read? There isn’t one! I have the best job there is! 

 

This time, I worked to not get sick. I did this so that I would not have to quarantine. I did it to protect the health of my students and their families. I did it to protect their family incomes. It was easy. The skills that it takes to not get Covid are the same skills that it takes to be celibate, and I was a virgin till the day I got married at 41 years old. 

 

I worked to protect my students’ families. It was easy. 

 

But I can’t do this year on repeat. 

 

Who do you think will babysit your children when all the teachers have left the building because you would not get vaccinated? How will YOU go to work? 

 

So, when the vaccine-resistant variants come, I can try a new tack. 

 

I can go out and lick all the doorknobs. I can get as sick as I can as fast as I can. I will pray that I just go ahead and die instead of having long Covid or the other debilitating, chronic effects that people are having post-Covid. 

 

And then I’ll come back and haunt the nincompoops that didn’t vaccine up this first go-around. 

 

I cannot do this school year again. 

 

I have lost hope. 

How to be Wrong

The people who chose not to mask and not to get vaccinated were wrong.

They were wrong; they made my teaching job and my sweet husband's hospital job so much harder for so much longer than they had to be.

They were wrong; they insisted on their personal rights and forgot about the second most important commandment: To love your neighbors as yourself.

They will continue to be wrong; as of now, the current vaccine provides immunity against the current variants. But they will become the Petri dishes for future variants that the current vaccine will not be able to provide immunity for.

There's lots of reasons they chose what they did. And they were wrong.

There are some of us who tried our best to take all people into consideration. We masked. We vaxxed up when it was our turn. We did these things out of consideration and compassion for others.

Now, the opportunity for us all to be unmasked has come. Some, because they never did and never will. The rest, because we followed science and the best intents of our respective religions: Compassion. Care for others. Emptying oneself of rights for the benefit of all, as Christ did.

If science can move us to be cautious, following that same science can move us to freedom.

So it will be hard to tell. Hard to tell anymore who was right and who was wrong.

The question is: Will it matter?

I know some who will want to hold on to the wrongness of others. It does point to a troubling lack of shared values in a group that used to be in step with each other.

But in holding on to the wrongness of others, will I damage my own soul?

If I have conducted myself in a way that I can both look in the mirror as well as face my God without regret, should the actions or values of any others matter?

If I hold on to anything about anyone else's choices, I will become at least AS wrong, if not more wrong than the original set of wrongness.

It is still a time to walk with caution of soul and compassion toward others.

Won't it always be that time?

Lord, have mercy on us all.

In the Family Way

            My paternal grandfather produced three boys. Fertile seed for the next generation. Reasonable hopes that the family name would be carried on. 

            I, the first child of my father; the fifth granddaughter in line, became the wearing thin of that hope. “Put her back!!!” my grandfather cried. 

A boy. Someone to carry on the name. It was not to be. Six granddaughters, one born after his life was over, his time run out. 

The story is that after he met me, he was charmed anyway. He died when I was about two years old. But I remember sitting on his lap. He fed me Vienna sausages and smelled like cherry pipe tobacco. 

Our name, gone. Our line, dissipated. I produced no children. My only sister, one child. Our family has faded away. Maybe we deserved to fade; we weren’t that functional, anyway. 

Forty-one years after Grandad wanted to put me back, I married. Into a family with three boys. Different family name. Different family entirely. I was invited, but I didn’t belong there, not natively. Such is step-parenting. 

It’s hard. It’s hard to find your place with people who came from a different womb. Blood binds together, and you find yourself on the outside. I’ve often felt like I’m stuck in a sidecar of a family already in progress. Not a driver or navigator, not even one who understands the route. I’m just along for the ride, and God knows why.

My first family, faded. My second family, not mine. 

            But yesterday.

            Yesterday, for the first time in years, I found myself in the family way. 

            In a family.

Our two oldest moved out two years ago. The eldest, to his second home away from our home just two weeks ago. As we sat down to our first supper at his new place, I noticed some of the glasses on the table. “These look like some I used to have!” 

They were. 

I was surprised; I didn’t even remember having those glasses at the time I married their dad. But there they were. My things, giving refreshment to a younger generation. 

During the conversation, recollections of the second son. His unique and somewhat alarming eating habits. A particular stage of soda, chips… and Vienna sausages. Ugh! Who eats those, anyway? 

I confessed. Second son got it from me, a woman in culture shock, having moved into a family that was not hers. Eating Vienna sausages for comfort, the same kind of sausages she had gotten from her granddad when she was two years old. 

             My glasses, on the table. 

My grandfather in his step great-grandson. 

Three boys.

Different name. 

But my own family, continuing in the family way. 

And God knows why. 

            Grateful. 

Turning Inward

          It’s football season, but the dratted sun and heat keep banging on. It’s September 20^th, but the temp has been about 95 degrees every day, interminably. 

            About a month ago, my sweet grey and tan snippet of a cat died; she whom I had been with for fifteen years. My comfort. My introverted nurturer. 

            And I’ve been left with a completely new job, an extroverted husband, our exuberant new puppy, and this heat. 

            I can’t take it. 

            Don’t get me wrong; I’m an extrovert. I’m an ambivert, anyway. I used to fall in love with true introverts and wear the hell out of them. They were fascinated by me, but they couldn’t keep up. I just made them tired. 

            But I have been running for too long now. 

            Like a coffee pot who made its coffee hours ago whose heat mechanism has malfunctioned to “on,” I’ve burned through everything I’ve got and am now crisping the carafe, getting more and more brittle. 

            I’m an extrovert, but I have to turn inward. I have to have means of turning inward. Or I burn out. 

            This cat, this nurturer. She caused me to turn inward; she would hop up on my lap when I finally sat down at the end of the day. She would luxuriously stretch and form herself into my arms. Her whole self would say to me, “There, there. Shush now. The work is done. Rest.” 

            Autumn turns me inward. The heat of the summer is loud, banging, unignorable. The coolness of autumn slows me, brings me into nature, invites me to rest and reflection. 

            Lesson planning, long-range planning: They turn me inward. Some of my happiest times lately have been alone in my classroom when I have had time to take stock, see where we have been, look at where we need to be going. Reflecting on the big picture fills me. 

            Madeline L’Engle wrote of this, of her need to be alone, even from the people and things that she loved. She explains that she gets things out of perspective, and only being alone puts her back in to the frame of mind she needs to love and live well. I am the same. Honestly, when I read her on this subject, I cried because it was such a relief to know I was not alone in this. I live in a family and world that is progressively more and more outward-facing, more extroverted. (The puppy doesn’t help matters.) I need to be able to regain perspective. 

            And it’s not just merely being alone. I can be alone but play on my phone and never get the inward perspective and rest that I need. Some of the feeling of running is my choice by what I choose to do in those idle moments I do have. Do I let myself actually idle, or do I stay turned on, heating my carafe, burning myself out? 

It’s football season, but the dratted sun and heat keep banging on. It’s September 20^th, but the temp has been about 95 degrees every day, interminably. Surely, surely the season will turn soon. 

But until then, I must find ways to turn inward.