Remember?

I'm thinking of you on Memorial Day, I drove around to capture some local decor I found meaningful, beautiful and silencing.

As for us, we slow roasted in the sun-our conversation both sweet and spicy.   Our decor for this day is of the pinwheel variety. The kids pull them and plant them again and again, and when the wind has died, they race looking up their own arms to see if their pins are still wheeling.  There's lots of near misses that keep us shaking our heads.   

The kids make us laugh next to stories that could otherwise be drop-dead mournful.  They do things for which we do not have energy (in the yard/overseas).  And we talk about perspective and how we are grateful.  We remember.  We sip tea. Smile at similar and familiar stories. Nod.  Sip.  Someone has just spritzed the littlest child with water from a coiled garden hose.

I have a war hero of my very own-all us grandkids called him 'Grumpa.'  He knew it, took pride.  Navy Man.

Earlier, I stood in line at the market with a watermelon I knocked on.  I tried to put my thumbnail through  its green skin to hear it snap.  It didn't.  Grumpa'd say, not ready.  I'm going to risk it, I decide and as I look at it in my arm I'm thinking again of  Grumpa's garden.  Huge.  Two and a half acres.  Variety.  Eden by the Missouri River.  Hard summer work for us kids.  Sweet sweet peas in the shade before nap.  I step out of line and reach for a  basket of Hull peas.  I want my kids today to eat them from their shell.  And I'll be straight with you.  Us kids complained a lot in those days about garden work, we didn't understand  the SWEET dreams of that generation.  I held my basket and my watermelon.  I remembered my grandfather's arm.

Blond sawdust curls in the silver sweat and hair of his forearm, dry dirt filling in knuckle creases, green from melons and dill and kohlrabi stained under his cresent nails.  I said in line at the market.  God.  Tell Grumpa something for me.  Tell him, "thank you for planting us peas."