D-Day with Dave

I first met Dave in an oil painting class I took not long after I moved to Wheaton. I had no friends, the obvious downside to moving somewhere new, and I'd always heard that if you want to make new friends, you should join clubs and groups to get to know people. I think I read this in Dear Abby, who rarely steers you wrong; the idea is that even if you don't make new friends, you will have done something worthwhile or learned something new, as opposed to just sitting at home feeling lonely.

I joined an oil painting class because I'd always wanted to learn how to do that. My artistic skills were rather stymied once we got into drawing anything that wasn't a tree in my middle school art class, so I wasn't sure how good I could be at this oil painting thing.

The year before, when I'd been living in Rouen, France, there was an oil painting studio I passed on the rue Eau de Robec every day on my walk through town, almost always slowing down to study the advertisement for oil painting lessons. I'd see other people in there, painting still lives of pears or loaves of bread, and a panic would rise up in me about doing something I wasn't very good at and trying to do it in French.

Beyond the fact that I didn't know the vocabulary needed for oil painting—why didn't Madame Warner teach me brush-related nouns back in high school French class?—I just knew that I would panic about verb conjugations and end up with a painting that the teacher would politely pretend was supposed to be some homage to abstract expressionism.

My first night in my Wheaton oil painting class, I found myself explaining this French story to Dave, who looked to be older than my grandpa and who was making a drawing of a covered bridge in pastels. I watched him work, colors flying across the page, but I was slightly perplexed as to what he was doing in an oil painting class if he was using pastels. And he was good—this man needed no lessons. His covered bridge made me think of Iowa and Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County {not bad things to be thinking about}, even as I told him my Rouen and Eau de Robec studio story.

As usually happens when we tell stories about things that happened to us in Europe, I was giving everything this Monet glow: the cafe I walked to, the woman I bought flower from every Sunday morning at the market, what the cathedral looked like in the late afternoon winter sun.

"Rouen, huh?" Dave interrupted. He said Rouen as many Americans do: Rue-anne.

I smiled at him, "Yes, it's a town in the north part of France, which is called Normandy. Where Joan of Arc was killed." I offered this as if it were the most important fact about Rouen, the one thing that would make people say, "Oh, that Rouen! Of course!"

"Oh, I've been there," Dave said quietly as he chose a bold, deep red for the bridge.

I get excited when anyone has been to Rouen; it's an instant bond, one that makes me think this new friend and I can now speak in code of shared memories of what it was like to walk on those cobblestone streets. I started to pump Dave for information. "Really? What did you do there? When did you visit? Isn't it so wonderful to sit at a cafe and look up at the cathedral?"

"Didn't sit in too many cafes then...I was just passing through, actually. It was in June 1944."

June. 1944. In Normandy.

He never looked up from his drawing this whole time, and I never stopped looking at him: This almost 90-year-old man who'd been coming to the oil painting group at the Wheaton Park District for 25 years just because he liked the people, even if he didn't want to oil paint anymore—this man with the watery blue eyes and who, I would learn, wore a University of Illinois sweatshirt every week to class—this man was in the D-Day invasion.

"Wow, so you...stormed the beach at Normandy?" The words sounded overly dramatic, as if I'd only picked them up by watching movies made about that time.

Up until that moment, I'd never met anyone who'd been at D-Day. My grandpa had been in World War II; he was in the Army Air Corps and was stationed in North Africa, where he worked as a cryptographer. When I'd ask him about the war, he'd tell me funny stories of camel races in the desert and how he met a British officer with his same name, Ronald Walker. My grandpa would hoot with laughter as he told us that he'd go over to the British camp with the British Ronald Walker—just to have their better beer. {And the British Ronald Walker would come to the American camp to eat our better food.}

My grandpa left behind an album with grainy pictures of Tunisia, palm trees, and men in uniform we'll never know. I wondered, that first night in oil painting, if Dave had an album at home with grainy pictures of Rouen. I wondered briefly if he even would've been allowed a camera in the invasion.

"Yep, I was there." He said this casually, as you might mention being at a football game or at the Dairy Queen. "My men and I, we were in the second wave, and then we marched on in across that beautiful French countryside."

Well, "marched on in," except for the bloodshed and except for the constant gunfire and except for the landmines on the beaches. And yes, the French countryside is beautiful—it's hard to look at it now and imagine armies and tanks in the place of the cows.

Dave downplayed his role in D-Day, and like the good Midwesterner I am, I didn't want to press for details he didn't seem willing to offer up. Instead, I focused on sketching a bird—my teacher had told me to start with that—and waited patiently to see if he'd tell any stories, encouraged, perhaps, by my quiet attentiveness.

He was and he did.

Over the next several years I was in that oil painting class, Dave told stories of the French people he met.

He talked about the time he'd accidentally shaved with some of the famous Normandy apple cider; he'd thought he was pouring water in to mix with his shaving soap, but oh no, it was the cider. Those watery blue eyes of his would crinkle in delight as he laughed, "I smelled so good after that, the men poked fun at me for wearing perfume!"

He and I talked about the green, lush, rolling hills of the Normandy pastures, and he said at one point that he did remember that cathedral in Rouen. But Dave never really talked about what it was like on the beach that day, beyond a gruff, "We did what we had to do" one night when I asked if he had been scared.

Today, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, makes me think of Dave, who I haven't seen much in several years. I no longer go to oil painting, but sometimes I run into him at the gym, lifting weights and riding the stationary bike while wearing an age-worn shirt from the Grand Canyon.

I look at him, hunched over the bike as his spindly legs peddle as fast as they can, and I think: You helped make history by doing "what had to be done."

And we're all so thankful you did.

a non-political post {mostly}

Campaign signs the day after an election are like pumpkins the day after Thanksgiving: they look out of place.

The season has past, but there they remain, reminders of what came before, even as the world pushes on to the Next Big Thing.

In the case of Thanksgiving, it's Christmas, although let's face it, stores start putting out their Christmas decorations in what, October? I was at Hobby Lobby over the weekend, and all of their fall decorations were 50% off, as if the crispness was already out of the air and all the leaves were but distant memories of raking.

Heck, even some of their Christmas decorations were 50% off, and I half-expected to turn a corner and run into Valentine's Day.

So Thanksgiving already has become a bit of a jump-over holiday anyway, but by the day after Thanksgiving, we're all just over it. We're ready for candy canes and eggnog lattes and little elves. {I feel this so strongly that I even wrote about it before, this belief that by the day after Thanksgiving, the world should be all Christmas-y.}

Sidenote of a business plan: Invent multi-holiday decorations. Like a pumpkin in a parka. Or a scarecrow dressed like Santa. Then someone could decorate for Hallow-thanks-mas in early October and be good until after Christmas.

Sidenote on the sidenote: That's a horrendous idea, especially coming from someone who gets so excited by the thrill of each season. But don't you bet that somewhere, in a SkyMall most likely high above us on a cross-country flight, someone has already marketed this?

It's the same thing with campaign signs: up until Tuesday, they were bold declarations.

Statements in the yard, along with the pumpkins and scarecrows.

They were the hope of victory and a fervent wish for a better tomorrow {or at the very least, a tomorrow that didn't involve so many political ads and flyer and blood-pressure-raising debates}.

And then the election happened and now, the day after, those campaign signs are reminders that we're still a very divided nation.

It's not that I expected the election to sew us all together—oh no, I don't imagine that we are some literal version of Betsy Ross' first American flag that can be put together stitch by stitch {or swing state by swing state?}.

But this morning on NPR, there was talk of President Obama's victory speech and of Governor Romney's concession speech. There were interviews with elated people in Chicago and bewildered people in Boston.

The country took a moment to breathe—and then, we moved on the Next Big Thing: the fiscal cliff.

And I was reminded that we still don't agree on how to fix that looming problem. {I like how I say "we," as if I had an important role to play in this. I did my part when I stood in line at 6:10 on Tuesday morning to vote, surrounded by my neighbors in the lobby of the library—and accepted an "I Voted" sticker from a very enthusiastic poll worker. She was quite obviously a morning person.}

That Republican versus Democrat bickering so represented by the bold campaign signs in people's yard: that's what made me feel that the signs were out of place this morning.

The bickering must be done and we must move on, lest we all tumble together over the cliff.

Oh, sure, there's plenty of talk of bipartisanship, but have you noticed that a lot of it—from both sides—comes with a twinge of, "We're certainly ready to do this, so long as those other guys are. We've always been willing to meet in the middle."

Oh, really?

I want to say that to all politicians and then make them sit down and watch news reels {do news reels still exist?} of their speeches during the debt ceiling crisis and the Super Committee silliness.

I want to say to them, "Didn't your mother teach you to not lie? Don't say always when you know it's not true."

I was thinking all these things while on a walk this morning, and then I came upon this sign that did not look out of place:

The flag.

A little hope that God will be with us.

And you probably can't see this very well, but there's an "I Voted" sticker on that sign: a tangible reminder that we can all take part in this democracy.

This sign calmed me this morning and reminded me that even as we face the Next Big Thing, we can take comfort knowing that we'll face it together.

america by the front door {a poem}

It was 7:30 on a Monday morning, and I'd run 6 miles and walked the dog and then not gotten ready for work: it was Memorial Day, and so I was on the balcony drinking coffee and writing.

Memorial Day, and I was writing about the American flag without even realizing it. I mean, of course I knew what I was writing; I'm not one of those writers who can say, "The words just flowed with barely any input from me" and not feel like a fraud. I was aware that I was writing about the flag, but I was halfway through this poem before I thought: Oh, how significant for today, to write about America and the flag and such. Good job, patriotic self.

But here's the deal: the finished poem doesn't feel very patriotic, which is a funny thing for me, the girl who often cries at "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," to say.

You could very easily go all pretentious English major on this poem and start interpreting the symbolism—and then extrapolate it to how I feel about America now. You could so easily do that: No, really, try it.

What would be your most hoity-toity literary interpretation of this poem?

Here's how to go about this:

• Pretend to be a literary critic. Or an English professor. Or hearken back to your college days and remember how deep you used to try to sound in literature class. {Don't deny it; we all thought we were deeper than we really were, and we tried to showcase it in interpretations of Wordsworth.}
• Consider affecting a British accent in your review, which would be even more hilarious, given that I'm writing about America, and we long ago told them no, thank you. And by "told them," I mean, "fought a war with them as a way of telling them that we didn't want to eat Marmite and that while we're thankful for BBC miniseries, they can pretty much keep everything else."
• Tell me how I feel about America. Or how you feel about America. Or whatever interpretation comes to mind. That's the point of literary interpretation, isn't it? That you can basically make it up as you go along?
• Awards in the form of Internet high fives will be given for the most creative interpretation.

{And then I'll tell you what I think of this poem, should you be interested in hearing that.}



America by the Front Door

Who, upon moving, left that American flag flying by the front door?
Faded old glory now of orange, cream, and violet,
it is barely a reminder of what it once was.

The stitching unravels, each stripe
whipping dejectedly in the breeze,
so the flag waves like
a bleached-blonde woman wearing a too-tight tank top
wiggling her fingers as a goodbye
to a friend she's never liked: glittery jewelry clanking
as her fingers fly in false kindness.

The house sits empty now.
The grass a forest and
the bushes grown so unruly they must be hiding something:
A secret garden or an enchanted labyrinth, maybe.

Or the truth of this little decaying graying house,
once a strong defender against the Midwestern winter—
now wholly open with its gaping holes
and its missing living room window.

Someone once sat behind that window in a rocking chair
and watched the just-hung American flag,
a bold red, white, and blue,
whipping defiantly in the breeze.

And as she waved to a passing neighbor,
the thought never crossed her mind
that one day
the flag would fade and the house,
why, it would fall,
and there'd be nothing left but
the memory of what used to be—
once when the flag was flying by the front door.

my subconscious is quite the fiction writer

I woke up to the remnants of a dream about picture day at school.

Except: the school was providing the outfits, my Realtor was the photographer, and we weren't being photographed but videoed singing the National Anthem. With back-up singers. And a full band.

I'm still unclear on how this was going to work, but we each were given a word of "The Star Spangled Banner," and we sang the song up to that point {patriotism only goes so far, you know}.

My word was at the end—"...o'er the land of the free / and the home.."—so I had plenty of time to choose an outfit.

How much stock do you put in dreams?

Does it mean anything that I didn't want to wear most of the school's options because they were scandalously short and provocatively cut? I remember shouting at one point, "But none of us are Katy Perry!"

Does it mean anything that I kept quietly saying, "I wish you had more outfits like Audrey Hepburn wore in Roman Holiday"?

Like this outfit. Why couldn't I have been given this option to wear while singing the National Anthem? Also, holding Atticus Finch's hand while singing would make me as American as apple pie.

This outfit might've been too much. Besides, it's gauche to sing the National Anthem—about fighting the British—in an outfit that looks like what Queen Elizabeth wore to her coronation.

My dreams tend to be so detailed yet zany that I don't think much of them—when I can even remember them. Ask me sometime about my VERY SPECIFIC dream of driving over cadavers {yes, cadavers} in a pick-up truck that was driven from the back seat, not the front seat. Also, my vision was blurry in that one, as it usually is in my dreams. {You don't need a degree in psychology to interpret that last part: I'm scared of going blind.}

Given the few times a year I do remember my dreams, I'm thankful that I can't remember them more often. The intricacies of the stories make me tired, and you should not wake up tired.

My subconscious clearly works overtime at night and becomes quite the fiction writer.

tunisia

All the recent news about Tunisia has got me thinking about Tunisia. Obviously.

Six years ago right about now, I went to Tunisia with a French tour group. It was winter vacation of the year I spent teaching English to French high schoolers, and some friends and I booked one of those flight/hotel/bus tours. This one, because it was in Tunisia, also included a camel ride.

I was happy to go to Tunisia. My grandpa had spent part of the war there, and I'd grown up hearing his stories about camel races and swimming in the Mediterranean. And oh yes, about how he met a guy in the British army who was also named Ronald Walker and how they became good friends.

British Ronnie Walker would sneak into the American camp to get a decent meal, and American Ronnie Walker, aka Grandpa Ronnie Walker, would sneak into the British camp to get a decent drink.

That was my experience with Tunisia growing up, and six years ago, I had a perfectly fine and memorable experience with Tunisia myself. There was a sandstorm, references to Star Wars {which was partially filmed there—name the scenes}, a lot of couscous, and some writing.

But now the Tunisian government has fallen apart, and I read an article in the New York Times about how a fight with a fruit vendor started the riots. I'm sorry and somewhat ashamed to report that I didn't read the whole story, and I know this is how rumors and other forms of misinformation gets started; someone is underinformed and then tries to pass themselves off as informed. Fruit caused the Tunisian crisis. At least according to the New York Times.

I'm thinking about Tunisia, trying to form an informed opinion on what's happening, and trying to ignore the fact that when I hear on NPR about riots and chaos in another country, I go slightly blank and numb.

With Tunisia on my mind, I dredged up the writing I did while crammed on a bus with French people.

Here's a little excerpt for you.

-----

I’ve lost my imagination.

rally to restore the everyday

I wasn't actually present at the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally in DC over the weekend, but I talked to someone at church who was, so that's kind of like I was there, right?

It's playing the six degrees of separation game, only with events. In the same way, I attended Obama's inauguration, and I'm pretty sure I could figure out a way to have attended the Oscars.

{Yeah, you're right—just knowing someone who went isn't really all that cool.}

But I did watch Jon Stewart's closing speech online, and it made me want to invite him to be a guest blogger for me.

Not that I've ever asked anyone else to write for me.

Or that he'd agree.

Or that I have the tiniest inkling of how to go about making that happen.

But still: I wanted him to write for me because he talked about something I talk about all the time. No, not musicals. Or Jane Austen. Or poetry. Or boys or running.

Jon Stewart talked about the small but significant ways we live our lives.

On a much bigger stage than I have ever used, he talked about how we find common ground and get through the day, through traffic, through small talk, through getting to know people who are different from you.

He didn't use this phrase, of course, but what he was talking about was the magic of the everyday, which I'm a big proponent of.

At least that's the feeling I got as I listened to the speech—that America isn't on the edge of disaster and that we are working hard to get along and fix what isn't working. In our small lives, we're getting by.

I especially liked this from Jon Stewart's speech:

"Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often something they do not want to do. But they do it. Impossible things [are accomplished] every day that are only made possible through the little reasonable compromises we all make."

We're moving ahead. Together. Little by little.

And I hope you voted today.

my patriotism

My family laughs at me because I cry at two things {and, for the most part, just these two things}:  sports movies and patriotism.

I do have emotions.  I do get upset and sad and hurt and disappointed and angry and frustrated; I do also have all the positive emotions.

But I don't cry too often in reaction to all those emotions.  Or to express those emotions.  Please stop looking at me like I'm Data from Star Trek.

Now please stop looking at me like that because I just revealed I'm a Trekkie.

Sometimes, I have to force myself to cry {because even when you don't cry all that much, you do come to a point where crying is a necessity, like water:  an obvious statement}.  

To get the tears to come, I watch Rudy.  The football movie.  The one about the underdog triumphing and getting to play in a Notre Dame game.  The one where the entire stadium starts chanting, "Rudy!  Rudy!  Rudy!" as he runs onto the field.

Even writing that makes me a little teary.  I said a little.

Patriotism will also make me cry, a trait I developed after living in Europe.  I've always liked America:  let me stress that.  But living away from here, away from Iowa, away from my family, away from belonging changed me into someone who has to breathe very deeply and concentrate very hard on not crying when that song "Proud to Be an American" plays.

I know.  

Schmaltzy patriotism gets me just as much as "Stars and Stripes Forever" or Judy Garland singing "God Bless America."  

I get the same amount of quivering tears for the "Armed Forces Salute" as I do for that Toby Keith song that talks about the Statue of Liberty shakin' her fist.

I wish I didn't react like that to Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue"; nothing in his song lines up with my version of America, which is what makes it so puzzling for me, these tears reacting to his ethnocentric anger.

Let's pretend from now on they're tears of sadness at his ugly American attitude and his belief that fighting is the best thing America offers the rest of the world.  Let's move on from his American way.

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday.

Every year I can, I spend it in Morning Sun, Iowa, where my mama grew up and where my grandma and some other family still live.

My version of America is wrapped up in Morning Sun--in the name that sounds like aprons and cross-stitching and victory gardens and a strong belief in "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

My version of America is hard work and community--and getting together to celebrate that hard work with good food.

It's tradition and small talk, as well as being in a place with roads like School Street and Church Street {because that's what's on those streets}.

My version of America is about belonging and being known, and it's that version of--and vision for--America that'll make me cry.

Just a little.

concerning the hot dog

On the road, I am the great justifier of junk food.  Most of us are:  this is why gas stations do not have salad bars and why the shrink-wrapped chicken salad sandwiches stay in the refrigerated case while Ding Dongs, Bugles, cheesy popcorn {it stains your car seats, you know, and it’s so pervasive—months later, you find orange dust in the trunk}, and Skittles must be re-stocked every 3 hours.

I am a particular justifier of the gas station hot dog.  To me, a hot dog is the ultimate road food: it’s self-contained, can be eaten quickly, and it doesn’t cost much.

Gas station hot dogs are usually about $1.00, the perfect price point for a cheap-o-focused person like me.  But let’s face it, when you think about what goes into a hot dog, $1.00 is an exorbitant price.

I know what’s in hot dogs.  Mr. Desi, my seventh grade science teacher, took it upon himself to explain hot dogs in exquisite detail to my class, which was partly made up of relatives and descendants of pig farmers.  And even if someone doesn’t have swine production in their family history, every Iowa kid can tell the difference between the smell of a hog confinement and the smell of say, just cows.

{This skill does not translate well to big city life, sadly.}

I don’t know why Mr. Desi chose to explain hot dogs to us—perhaps we were overly distracted one day by the hot lunch main dish, a foot-long hot dog.  Or maybe he was trying to toughen our stomachs for pig dissection in ninth grade.

Snouts, intestines, organs, anything else that fell in the vat while mushing up the hot dog mix:  I suggest we start thinking of hot dogs as America’s answer to haggis.  Or to paté.  Or to anything served in a British pub.

People in other countries eat equally questionable food, so America should put hot dogs in their proper cultural context.  And we should not be ashamed to eat them, wherever we may find them.  In gas stations.  At a street vendor on Broadway in NYC.  At Wrigley Field.  At a Fourth of July cook out.

{I’m starting to feel overly-patriotic, as if I should be humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” while writing this manifesto on the very American-ness of the hot dog.  I’m going to stop before I start reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.}

I do my part in honoring America, nostalgia, the food industry, and the classic road trip.  Like I said, I eat a lot of gas station hot dogs, and I'm proud of it.

One nation, under God, indivisible...