[MD] Happy...

[MarshaV]

HI Dan, 

Thank you.  This was a lovely tribute to fathers, and although, 
our stories are very different, you brought to mind many warm, 
and loving memories.  Being a woman, my father was my first 
love.  In many ways he taught me how to love a man.  He was 
a great guy, and a great story teller.   

You and your stories, are very special.  


Marsha



On Jun 19, 2011, at 1:23 PM, Dan Glover wrote:

> Hello everyone
> 
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 3:55 AM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Happy Fathers day to the MD fathers.
> 
> Thank you, Marsha.
> 
> One constant in life, at least in my life, is loss. As a son, I've
> lost a father. And as a father, I've lost a son. So for me, today is a
> reminder of both what is and what could have been. You asked for a
> story. Here is one just for you:
> 
> Father's Day Requiem
> 
> I was born in 1955 and grew up during the 60's, tumultuous times. I
> was too young to be a hippie and born too late to be part of my dad's
> generation. He fought the Japanese during WWII in the islands, and
> came home to tell us kids many stories. Years later, my step-mother
> confided that he never talked to her about the war but that he still
> had nightmares about it and often awoke screaming.
> 
> My wife Yoli's family were very close, not at all like mine. When her
> family wanted to convey intense emotions, they touched and hugged each
> other. When my family wanted to convey intense emotions, they yelled
> and struck out at each other. I wanted very much to be part of her
> family.
> 
> When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, my dad was 17 years old. He talked his
> mother into signing the papers so that he could join the Marines. My
> dad was never one for education; he dropped out of high school to
> fight the good fight and never went back. He believed in work, not
> schooling.
> 
> I was raised in a rural community. My dad and step mother were
> children of the Depression. They expected us boys work from an early
> age. I worked alongside migrant workers from Mexico every summer:
> hoeing beans, de-tasseling corn, picking strawberries and asparagus,
> baling hay, anything that paid a few bucks. Most all the migrants I
> worked with spoke no English at all. Listening to them talk, I
> gradually picked up their language quite naturally and over the years
> grew to speak it fluently.
> 
> My dad was sent to Guadalcanal, Saipan, Leyte, Tinian, and a half
> dozen other islands no one ever heard of before or since. His unit was
> the first one into battle. My dad's company started out with one
> hundred and eighty men; only two survived the end of the war. Two! Can
> you imagine? My dad was wounded three times and sent back when he
> recovered sufficiently. He carried pieces of shrapnel in his body
> until the day he died.
> 
> We had a secret to share. Yoli had just discovered she was going to
> have our baby. She was only seventeen. I was a year older. We were
> stupid kids but we were going to get married and raise out baby
> together. We were going to be a family. I didn't expect the news to go
> over well but I never expected it to go the way it did either.
> 
> On Saipan, my dad told us about how the Japanese held out in a
> concrete block bunker with slots cut for them to shoot out of. The men
> in my dad's squad took turns every day lobbing their ration of hand
> grenades at those slots, hoping one would go into a slot and kill the
> Japanese inside to end the holdout.
> 
> When Yoli invited me to dinner that year, I didn't want to say yes but
> I couldn't say no. She'd already introduced me to her family and it
> hadn't gone as well as it could have. I had worn some old blue jeans
> with holes in them that day. I'd been working outdoors. But that's no
> excuse. So. After introductions, the first thing Pete said was:
> "Yolanda, why don't you take Dan to your brother's room. Maybe he's
> got a pair of pants Daniel can borrow."
> 
> Every night, one of the Japanese would call out: "Roosevelt eats
> shit!" And directly, one the marines would call back: "Tojo eats
> shit!" The shouting went on all night long. That's how close they were
> to each other... close enough not only to hurl grenades but insults as
> well.
> 
> As dinner progressed it soon became clear to me that it wasn't the men
> who wore the pants in this family. It appeared so at first glance, but
> watching the family dynamics unfold at the table, I soon understood
> how mistaken I was. The men were full of bluster and fury but when a
> woman spoke, the men all turned into children, seeking only to please.
> 
> One day, a buddy of my dad managed to succeed in the task. But the
> bunker must have been filled with large quantities of explosives. The
> grenade resulted in a huge explosion, hurtling huge chunks of concrete
> high into the air. One of those chucks hit his buddy in the face. When
> my dad found him, his face was completely flat.
> 
> Dinner lasted three hours. It was fabulous, especially to a kid who
> ate cold Spaghettios out of a tin can with the top still attached. We
> had agreed to wait until after dinner to make the announcement. Dinner
> was so good I nearly forgot. But as we finished the last of the
> dessert courses and people started to stir, Yoli rose and spoke.
> Everyone sat down and listened to her intently. I got up and stood
> beside her.
> 
> The boy asked for a cigarette, which my dad lit and placed to his
> mangled lips, holding it so the boy could draw on it. Then the boy
> died. A medic happened by a few minutes later and told my dad there
> was no way a man could survive a wound like that. My dad said he
> didn't argue with the medic. But he knew what he knew.
> 
> Her mother seemed to know what Yoli was going to say before she said
> it. She said nothing; she just sat there dabbing at the corners of her
> mascara-streaked eyes with a balled up napkin. Her father came up to
> me and looked me in the eyes. I thought he was going to hug me but
> instead he caught me with a roundhouse kidney punch that took all the
> strength out of my knees and made it hard to catch my breath for a few
> moments.
> 
> On Iwo Jima, they ate grasshoppers and beetles. There wasn't any clean
> water to drink. The military saw fit to invade the island with no
> logistical support at all... the Japanese burrowed into caves all over
> the island, fighting over every square foot of that island as if it
> meant something. Fierce and fearless is how he described them. The
> Americans took very few prisoners; most of the Japanese soldiers died
> fighting, or killed themselves when it became apparent the battle was
> lost.
> 
> Yoli was expected to marry a boy from a very well to do family who
> lived in the old country. She once told me that she'd met the boy only
> briefly when they were both five years old and that in her family such
> marriages were the rule rather than the exception. She told me - in
> the old country, and even in the here and now - such marriages were
> accepted ways for families, especially very wealthy families like
> hers, to consolidate their power and ensure the purity of the
> bloodline.
> 
> The word came down from on high to prepare for a mainland invasion of
> Japan itself. The Marines would be first in. The Marines were always
> first in. They all knew that most of them would die in that invasion.
> Then, one day news came of a new, terribly powerful bomb that had been
> dropped on a Japanese city called Hiroshima. Not long after, a second
> bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. And Japan surrendered not long after.
> 
> Yoli's mother ended up giving her permission for us to marry, after
> all. She said that she wanted to see what her grandchild would look
> like, and that if we ran off, she might never get to see the baby. She
> said she knew how in love we were by looking into her daughter's eyes.
> And she said she knew what she herself would have done for such a
> love.
> 
> My dad came home from the war, married my mother, raised a family, and
> told his boys stories about his trials and tribulations in the
> Pacific. I always thought it a pity that he preferred the spoken word
> to writing as he had such good stories, and my remembrances are but
> poor substitutes. My dad never knew that I had married that first
> time, nor did he ever know about the grandson that he lost when Yoli
> passed away given birth to our son.
> 
> My dad and my son are buried both many years and many hundreds of
> miles apart. I rarely visit either of their graves... I figure all
> there is there are dead bones mouldering under the good earth. I like
> to think their spirits are here with me always. But of course there is
> no way to know that. It's just that, sometimes, I feel them close. Or
> I feel something that I can't explain, and I suppose, maybe, that is
> it.
> 
> Thank you for reading,
> 
> Dan
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org/md/archives.html


 
___