will ye go to flanders?

Happy Veterans Day, everybody. Today is one of my favorite days of the year, and it's been a beautiful 11.11 on my end; the day was grey and stormy and the air smelled of dead leaves and cold concrete. I spent 11:11 on the front steps of Carden Memorial School, breathing in the silence mixed in memories of plaid skirts and navy blazer. I love this day, when quiet contemplation is nearly mandatory and you can't help but pray gratitude.

I remembered standing in Arlington Cemetery, blinking back tears as I found the grave of a teacher's husband. It was part of the school's American History pilgrimage--we'd been hearing about it from kindergarten on--but it still caught me off-guard. Days before we'd danced away in Williamsburg, skipped about the Smithsonian, sat in on Congress. Every new lesson had built up to this point, to this sacrifice, and yet I felt overwhelmingly unprepared. The others moved quietly on, but I couldn't leave. I was there a good five minutes before he came back for me, a friendly hand at the small of my back, a whispered "You ready?" I turned to Fish with a weak smile. "I can't . . . this is . . . this is . . ." He nodded as we walked past the white stones, row upon row of lives lost for ours.

We had walked for a half an hour in silence, up one road and then down the other, hill upon hill lined in white. Occasionally Fish would stop to swing his camera off his shoulder, snapping still memories of the spring morning. At the final hill we began the descent to the bus, and Fish suddenly spoke.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row." He enunciated the last phrase just as Mr. Bradford had taught years ago, and I picked up where he left off with a grateful smile; he'd left the larks to me. "That mark our place; and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly scarce heard amid the guns below."

He joined me then, and we continued our poetic conversation til the final phrase, settling into the last open seats on the bus without any other explanation. We didn't need any; our every thank you was carried in John McCrae's words---in those stanzas are years of closest company, of beloved school and honored education. They encapsulate the life we'd come to love and the knowing that such a life was a gift, bought at a price. They captured a moment where boy and girl walked freely across independent land. And yet we may never be grateful enough.

I thought those words today, as I sat alone on those steps. The world continued on around me in a whirl of traffic and everyday errands, but I sat on hallowed ground. So much we take as deserved and commonplace, and yet I can hardly justify the shoes on my feet. I sat on steps worn with countless years of student traffic, steps that led to classes filled with creative thought and the opportunity to become whatever we wished to be. I was minutes away from leaving for my own home an hour away, where I'd walk to church to worship as I chose. I made dinner tonight unusually conscious of full cupboards and warm home. At the moment I'm stressing over filled classes and discouraged with the limited choice of a sophomore standing---and yet I still have a choice. A choice to learn what I love, to say what I feel, to become whoever I wish to be.

What am I giving back?

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.